HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

A    CRITICAL    STUDY 


HENEY  DAVID  THOBEATJ 

A  CEITICAL  STUDY 


BY 


MAKE  VAN  DOREN 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
fifoetfi&e  pre 
1916 


COPYRIGHT,    IQI6.   BY    MARK   VAN   DOREN 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  September  igib 


TO 
MY  FATHER  AND  MOTHER 


PREFACE 

THIS  study  is  founded  pretty  largely,  it  will 
be  seen,  on  Thoreau's  Journal,  which  has  not 
been  examined  before,  so  far  as  I  know,  with 
much  attention  to  chronology.  If  new  emphasis 
has  been  placed  here  or  there,  it  is  because  new 
ground  has  been  covered.  If  now  and  then  un 
welcome  conclusions  are  arrived  at,  the  Journal 
is  to  blame ;  the  Journal  is  important,  I  think, 
not  because  it  is  the  most  attractive,  but  because 
it  is  the  most  complete,  picture  of  Thoreau's 
mind. 

I  am  led  to  attach  a  preface  to  so  slight  an 
essay  mainly  by  the  consciousness  of  certain 
debts  which  I  have  incurred  while  occupied  with 
Thoreau,  and  which  I  desire  very  much  to  ac 
knowledge  somewhere.  The  essay  owes  most  to 
Professor  S.  P.  Sherman,  of  the  University  of 
Illinois,  who  was  its  constant  stimulus  when  it 
was  being  written,  and  to  my  brother,  Carl  Van 
Doren,  who  gave  invaluable  aid  when  it  was 
being  revised.  Professor  A.  H.  Thorndike  and 
Professor  "\V.  P.  Trent,  of  Columbia  University, 
kindly  read  the  manuscript,  and  made  important 
suggestions.  Mr.  George  S.  Hellman  generously 


viii  PREFACE 

gave  me  carte  blanche  with  his  Thoreau  posses 
sions.  Mr.  F.  H.  Allen  brought  his  accurate 
knowledge  of  Thoreau  to  bear  upon  the  essay  as 
it  was  going  through  the  press. 

M.  V.  D. 


CONTENTS 

I.  THE  SOLITARY 1 

II.  FRIENDSHIP;  NATURE         ....  14 

III.  EXPANSION 39 

IV.  THE  SPECIFIC       ......  67 

V.  READING          .        ; 87 

VI.  POSITION 109 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 129 

INDEX 133 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 


THE    SOLITARY 

THE  character  and  the  works  of  Henry  David 
Thoreau,  who  chose  to  live  alone  in  the  world, 
have  roused  stabbing  assailants  like  Lowell  and 
Stevenson,  or  complete  panegyrists  like  Emer 
son  and  the  biographers,  but  few  critics.  In  the 
twentieth  century  it  is  desirable  not  so  much  to 
condemn  or  justify  the  whole  of  Thoreau  as  to 
describe  and  explain  his  parts,  not  so  much  to 
take  or  reject  the  whole  of  his  shrewdly  pro 
pounded  doctrine  as  to  decide  wherein  only  and 
wherein  not  at  all  his  extraordinary  and  un 
doubted  spiritual  value  lies  ;  and  now,  when  vir 
tually  all  he  wrote  is  in  print,  such  a  study 
becomes  possible.  It  becomes  possible  both  to 
ask  the  reason  for  his  living  to  himself  —  how 
much  it  was  his  nature,  how  much  it  was  his 
theory ;  and  to  ask  the  consequences  of  the  life 
he  lived  —  how  valuable  his  theory,  how  im 
portant  his  personality  ?  If  in  the  present  essay 
the  ends  of  his  thinking  seem  to  be  sought  ex 
clusively  in  the  Journal,  the  excuse  is  that  only 
in  the  Journal  did  Thoreau  think  to  the  end ;  it 


2  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

was  his  misfortune  that  to  think  to  the  end 
transcen  den  tally  was  to  think  extravagantly ;  it 
is  nowhere  pretended  that  this  is  his  most  im 
portant  thinking  ;  it  is  never  forgotten  that  the 
best  of  him  is  not  the  raw  Journal. 

Thoreau  states  his  theory  of  solitude  as  clearly 
as  relentlessly.  Whoever  is  solitary  by  nature, 
says  Aristotle,  is  either  a  wild  beast  or  a  god. 
Thoreau  hints  now  and  then  that  he  feels  him 
self  in  the  company  of  gods ;  certainly  his  ap- 
roach  to  the  arcanum  of  solitude  betrays  the 
morning  worshiper.  The  slender  musing  of  Wil 
liam  Drummond  in  Hawthornden;  the  jaunty 
salute  of  Cotton  and  Walton, 

"  Farewell,  thou  busy  world,  and  may 
We  never  meet  again  "  ; 

the  gentlemanly  retreat  of  Cowley ;  the  Hora- 
tian  pose  of  Pope ;  the  hermitage  of  the  eight 
eenth-century  sentimentalist ;  the  plaintive  self- 
assurance  of  Shelley,  "  a  nightingale  who  sits  in 
darkness  and  sings  to  cheer  its  own  solitude 
with  sweet  sounds " ;  the  mellow  confidence  of 
Wordsworth  in  his  mountain  surroundings ;  the 
pugnacity  of  Landor,  who  strove  with  none ;  the 
quizzical  fancy  of  Hazlitt  for  "living  to  one's 
self " ;  the  terrible  nakedness  of  Carlyle  at 
twenty-three,  "  wandering  over  the  moors  like  a 
restless  spirit "  ;  the  mock  bravery  of  Browning, 


THE  SOLITARY  3 

hoisting  his  soul  amid  infinite  din,  —  none  of 
these  has  either  the  quiet  consecrated  relent- 
lessness  of  Thoreau's  passion  or  the  salt  of  his 
irony^  Nor  does  the  sense  of  futility  that  is  in  the 
youthful  Arnold  haunt  Thoreau  as  it  haunted 
most  men  of  letters  in  the  nineteenth  century ; 
Thoreau  never  shrank  publicly  from  his  meta 
physics. 

In  America  the  long  tradition  of  Puritan  and 
Quaker  inward  awe,  the  exalted  security  of  Bry 
ant,  and  the  lonely  forests  of  Cooper  take  us 
but  a  little  way  toward  Thoreau.  Even  within 
the  transcendental  circle  we  find  him  apart. 
Emerson,  whose  "  strength  and  doom  "  was  "  to 
be  solitary,"  and  who  set  the  fashion  of  solitude, 
anticipated  the  whole  gist  of  Lowell's  "  Thoreau  " 
when  he  reminded  himself  that  "  it  is  not  the 
solitude  of  place,  but  the  solitude  of  soul  which 
is  so  estimable  to  us."  Hawthorne,  who  did  not 
conceal  his  personal  horror  of  the  spiritual  vac 
uums  he  created  in  fiction,  and  Herman  Mel 
ville,  who  shuddered  throughout  his  "  Moby 
Dick"  to  find  his  imagination  "encompassed 
by  all  the  horrors  of  the  half -known  life,"  — 
these  clearly  have  not  the  self-sufficiency  of 
Thoreau,  of  whom  Emerson  said,  "  He  was  bred  to 
no  profession  ;  he  never  married ;  he  lived  alone ; 
he  never  went  to  church ;  he  never  voted ;  he  re 
fused  to  pay  a  tax  to  the  State ;  he  ate  no  flesh, 


4  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

he  drank  no  wine,  he  never  knew  the  use  of  to 
bacco  ;  and,  though  a  naturalist,  he  used  neither 
trap  nor  gun."  Only  Thoreau  among  the  tran- 
1  scendentalists  by  constitution  demanded  lifelong 
letting  alone  —  was  content  (at  least  in  theory) 
with  pure  loneliness.  Only  Thoreau  can  be  vis 
ualized  as  an  isolated  personality,  lying  prone  on 
the  ice  to  explore  the  bottom  of  Walden  Pond, 
or  reading  Homer  in  his  hut  on  bad  nights,  or 
hoeing  beans  in  quiet  clearings,  or  strolling  in 
condescension  towards  the  village,  or  talking  to 
a  friend  across  the  pond,  or  holding  the  world  at 
bay  with  a  paradox. 

Such  is  the  Thoreau  of  "  Walden "  and  the 
"Week."  But  there  is  a  wide  space  between 
the  public  and  the  private  Thoreau.  The  private 
Thoreau  was  not  all  self-sufficiency.  Speaking 
always  very  stoutly,  claiming  to  have  been  born 
for  solitude,  and  professing  to  find  it  "  whole 
some  to  be  alone  the  greater  part  of  the  time," 
he  still  had  not  at  center  one  third  of  the  poise 
and  complacency  of  Emerson.  What  students 
|  of  Thoreau  might  always  have  suspected,  the 
fourteen  volumes  of  his  "  Journal,"  betraying 
the  self-doubter  in  almost  equal  proportions  with 
the  self-exploiter,  now  confirm. 

Among  the  critics,  the  personality  of  Thoreau 
has  never  been  presented  in  full,  mainly  because 
it  has  been  treated  in  no  case  by  any  one  who 


THE  SOLITARY  5 

was  not  interested  in  proving  a  point — that 
Thoreau  was  a  hermit,  that  Thoreau  was  not  a 
hermit,  that  Thoreau  had  pity  and  humor,  that 
Thoreau  was  cold  and  inhuman,  that  Thoreau 
was  a  perfect  stoic,  that  Thoreau  was  a  senti 
mentalist,  that  Thoreau  was  a  skulker.  Emer 
son,  who  knew  him  best,  cannot  always  be  re 
lied  on  to  give  a  fair  account  of  the  man,  because 
Emerson's  interest  in  him  was  the  interest  of  a 
philosophic  father  in  a  philosophic  son  ;  he  spoke 
of  him  as  "  my  Henry  Thoreau " ;  he  com 
mended  Thoreau  the  naturalist  only  because  he 
practiced  (or  so  Emerson  believed)  what  Emer 
son  the  philosopher  of  Nature  preached ;  and 
after  Thoreau's  death  he  edited  a  volume  of  let 
ters  which  he  said  he  had  selected  to  represent 
"  a  perfect  piece  of  stoicism."  Thoreau  had  not 
bid  for  such  an  interpretation,  or  indeed  for  any 
interpretation.  "  You  may  rely  on  it  that  you 
have  the  best  of  me  in  my  books,  and  that  I  am 
not  worth  seeing  personally,"  he  wrote  to  a 
friend  in  February,  1856.  But  it  may  be  re 
membered  that  he  hated  visitors,  and  that  if  the 
best  of  him  is  in  the  books  he  published,  by  no 
means  all  of  him  is  or  can  be  there. 

One  is  never  in  doubt  that  Thoreau's  person 
ality  was  not  neutral,  but  pungent.    Emerson^ 
found  him  too  withdrawing  in  his  later  years ; 
but  Thoreau  then  believed  that  Emerson  was 


6  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

patronizing  him,1  and  he  certainly  was  no  man 
to  bask  for  long  at  a  time  in  the  sun  of  Emer 
sonian  geniality.  To  a  cool  observer  Thoreau 
must  have  been  most  interesting  for  what  has 
been  called  the  "  fine  aroma  "  of  his  character. 
At  least  his  personality  was  positive  enough  to 
hold  its  own  with  the  other  transcendentalists. 
Stevenson  took  the  cue  for  his  remarkable  crit 
icism  of  Thoreau's  disposition  from  the  "  thin, 
penetrating,  big-nosed  face."  The  face,  even  the 
whole  figure,  is  significant.  The  Rowse  crayon  2 
and  the  Worcester  daguerreotype3  both  show 
a  face  by  no  means  simple  to  describe  —  con 
temptuous  yet  sensitive,  aglint  with  irony  yet 
dissolved  in  the  pains  of  self,  cold  yet  sensuous, 
alert  yet  lonely.  His  figure  was  unusually  slight, 
with  sloping  shoulders  and  narrow  chest,  but  it 
was  "  alive  with  Thoreau."  Emerson's  statement 
that  there  was  "  somewhat  military  in  his  na 
ture  "  scarcely  does  justice  to  the  quality  of  this 
44 life"  in  Thoreau's  body.  There  was  much  of 
determination  ;  his  hand  was  habitually  clenched; 
in  walking  he  was  a  "  noticeable  man,"  with  "  his 
eyes  bent  on  the  ground,  his  long  swinging  gait, 
his  hands  perhaps  clasped  behind  him,  or  held 

1  Thoreau's  Journal,  ni,  256.  The  references  hereafter  to 
Thoreau's  works  are  to  the  volumes  of  the  Walden  Edition,  20 
vols.,  Boston :  Houghton  Mifflin  Company,  1906. 

a  1854.  Frontispiece  of  vol.  I  of  the  Journal. 

8  1856.  Frontispiece  of  the  Week. 


THE  SOLITARY  1 

closely  at  his  side."  There  was  also  much  of 
wildness;  Hawthorne  thought  him  something  of 
an  Indian,  found  him  "  wild,  original  —  as  ugly 
as  sin,"  with  uncouth  though  courteous  manners. 
Alcott  was  "touched  by  his  aboriginal  vigor," 
and  a  younger  observer  jotted  down  these  notes 
in  his  diary  after  his  first  sight  of  Thoreau: 
T"  Thoreau  looks  eminently  sagacious  —  like  a 
sort  of  wise,  wild  beast  ...  a  ruddy  weather- 
beaten  face,  which  reminds  me  of  some  shrewd 
and  honest  animal's  —  some  retired  philosophical 
woodchuck  or  magnanimous  fox.  .  .  .  He  walks 
about  with  a  brisk,  rustic  air,  and  never  seems 
tired." 

Thoreau's  ancestry  reveals  very  few  secrets. 
His  racial  inheritance  is  as  interesting  as  it  is 
complicated ;  but  it  is  too  simple  to  conjecture, 
as  writers  have  done,  that  he  derived  his  narrow 
ness  from  the  Scotch,  his  tendency  to  hold  an 
extreme  logical  position  from  the  French,  his 
wistfulness  and  his  wildness  from  the  Celts,  his 
clear,  pure  mysticism  from  the  Quakers,  or  his 
sense  of  moral  responsibility  from  the  Puritans. 
It  would  be  more  reasonable  to  inquire  what  his 
immediate  family  must  have  meant  to  him.  There 
is  little  to  be  known,  and  less  that  is  significant, 
even  here.  The  father,  it  seems,  gave  Thoreau 
scarcely  more  than  his  workmanlike  quality ;  we 
hear  that  he  was  "  a  cautious  man,  a  close  ob- 


8  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

server,  methodical  and  deliberate  in  action,"  who 
"produced  excellent  results."  The  mother  con 
tributed,  it  is  to  be  supposed,  quick  wit,  high 
spirits,  audacity,  and  alertness. 
<  Those  qualities  of  Thoreau's  mind  and  heart 
which  a  wise  reader  will  not  forget  are  six :  sen 
sibility,  concreteness  of  vision,  thoroughness, 
wild  combative  self-sufficiency,  humor,  and  wist- 

',  fulness. 

Thoreau  was  more  at  the  mercy  of  his  senses 
than  a  perfect  piece  of  stoicism  is  expected  to 
be.  "He  had  many  elegances  of  his  own,"  says 
Emerson.  "  Thus,  he  could  not  bear  to  hear  the 
sound  of  his  own  steps,  the  grit  of  gravel ;  and 
therefore  never  willingly  walked  in  the  road, 
but  in  the  grass,  on  mountains  and  in  woods.'* 
The  sight  of  a  suffering  fugitive  slave  could  strike 
extraordinary  pity  from  him.  One  of  the  most 
effective  chapters  in  "  Walden"  is  on  "Sounds," 
and  his  passion  for  music  was  more  than  philo 
sophical  —  sometimes  almost  "  tore  him  to 
pieces."  H«  betrays  a  sensitiveness  in  his  hu 
man  relationships  which  one  is  tempted  to  em 
ploy  for  explaining  his  very  aloofness.  He  could 
not  speak  of  his  brother  John  Thoreau's  death, 
twelve  years  after  it  had  occurred,  "  without 
physical  suffering,  so  that  when  he  related  it  to 

'  his  friend  Kicketson  at  New  Bedford,  he  turned 
pale  and  was  forced  to  go  to  the  door  for  air." 


THE  SOLITARY  9 

Certainly  he  was  not  at  center  the  iron-cold 
structure  of  Stevenson's  essay.  Indeed,  it  is  pos 
sible  that  his  indifference  was  after  all  only  a 
superstructure  built  on  a  very  unfirm  founda 
tion,  that  his  whole  "stoic"  career  was  the 
career  of  one  who  demanded  desperately  the 
right  to  feel  what  he  pleased  as  secretly  but  as 
powerfully  as  he  pleased.  This  story  is  told  of 
Thoreau  at  nineteen  or  twenty :  "  While  in  col 
lege  he  once  asked  his  mother  what  profession 
she  would  have  him  choose.  She  said,  pleasantly, 
'You  can  buckle  on  your  knapsack,  dear,  and 
roam  abroad  to  seek  your  fortune ' ;  but  the 
thought  of  leaving  home  and  forsaking  Concord 
made  the  tears  roll  down  his  cheeks.  Then  his 
sister  Helen,  who  was  standing  by,  tenderly  put 
her  arm  around  him  and  kissed  him,  saying, 
'No,  Henry,  you  shall  not  go;  you  shall  stay  at 
home  and  live  with  us.'  "  That  youth  was  not  the 
Cato  he  is  supposed  by  many  to  have  been.  He 
preferred  Concord  to  cosmopolitanism  for  a  rea 
son.  He  cannot  reprove  the  world  for  having 
emotions. 

If  Thoreau  felt  and  saw  and  heard  much,  he 
also  felt  and  saw  and  heard  concretely.  In  his 
writing  and  in  his  living  his  genius  for  the 
specific,  his  preoccupation  with  details,  his  love 
of  facts,  and  his  passion  for  real  experience  mark 
him  off  as  distinctly  as  is  possible  from  his  tran- 


10  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

scendental  brethren.  His  handiness  with  tools, 
which  the  pencil-making  evinces,  has  become  al 
most  proverbial.  He  seemed  eminently  sensible 
to  his  friends ;  Hawthorne  found  in  him  "  a  basis 
of  good  sense  "  and  thought  him  "  a  healthy  and 
wholesome  man  to  know."  Alcott  knowingly 
refers  to  his  "russet  probity  and  good  sense." 
Certainly  an  utter  sincerity  and  a  passion  for 
^genuine  experience  were  in  him.  "There  are 

\  nowadays  professors  of  philosophy,  but  not  phi 
losophers,"  he  writes  in  "Walden."  "To  be  a 
philosopher  is  not  merely  to  have  subtle 
thoughts,  nor  even  to  found  a  school,  but  so  to 
love  wisdom  as  to  live  according  to  its  dictates, 
a  life  of  ^simplicity,  independence,  magnanimity, 

L^and  trust,' 

What  Emerson  preached  in  smiling  benignity, 
his  disciple  Thoreau  lived  and  described  with 
amazing  thoroughness,  with  set  lips.  He  kept 
both  his  poise  and  his  singleness  of  aim  intact ;  he 
was  always  on  tiptoe  ready  for  a  new  experience  ; 
he  could  pursue  a  subject  of  conversation  more 
relentlessly  and  longer  than  could  any  other  in 
the  company.  Even  if  he  were  insignificant  in 
that  he  took  all  of  his  ideas  from  Emerson,  he 
would  still  be  significant  in  that  he  reduced  them 
to  their  practicable  and  visualizable  essence. 

He  not  only  suited  himself  in  solitude,  but 
went  out  and  challenged  more  social  souls  to 


THE  SOLITARY  11 

combat.  Even  as  early  as  one  of  his  college  es 
says,  he  attacked  "  the  man  of  the  world  "  as  a 
"  viper."  Living  "  extempore,"  living  the  life  of 
whim  that  Emerson  recommended,  Thoreau  was 
unpleasant  to  contradict,  and  dangerous  to  curb. 
Pie  had  none  of  what  he  called  "  a  false  shame 
lest  he  be  considered  singular  and  eccentric." 
He  lived  by  instinct  on  the  defensive,  striking 
back  constantly  with  paradox,  and  steadily 
throwing  up  works  around  his  person  and  his 
philosophy  with  assertion.  %'  Thoreau  is  with 
difficulty  sweet,"  said  Emerson.  Thoreau  rarely 
bothered  about  being  sweet.  He  had  an  appetite 
for  sarcasm  and  a  gift  for  rejoinder,  and  often 
indulged  both  purely  for  his  own  satisfaction  in 
closed  pages  of  the  Journal.  He  was  a  voluble 
talker,  and  did  not  spare  his  fellow  townsmen 
any  criticism.  Stevenson  most  absurdly  charges 
him  with  a  "  hatred  of  a  genuine  brand,  -hot  as 
Corsican  revenge,  and  sneering  like  Voltaire." 
Emerson's  gentler  judgment,  that  "  he  did  not 
feel  himself  except  in  opposition,"  comes  much 
closer  to  the  truth. 

Thoreau  had  more  of  native  humor  than  any 
of  the  transcendentalists,  just  as  he  had  a  live 
lier  appreciation  of  facts.  If  "Walden  "  is  the  best 
transcendental  book,  that  is  partly  because  it  was 
written  in  bounding  spirits,  with  ^ 


and  tongue  in  cheek.  Cynical  generally,  satur- 


12  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

I  nine,  impish  on  occasions,  always  pointed,  his 
humor  sometimes  broadened  into  boisterousness. 
When  Ellery  Channing  visited  Thoreau  at  Wai- 
den,  the  two  "  made  that  small  house  ring  with 
boisterous  mirth."  There  are  puns  in  the  Letters 
and  the  Journal  which  only  pure  fun  could  order. 
There  is  testimony  that  Thoreau  liked  to  come 
down  from  his  study  of  evenings  to  dance  or 
whistle  or  sing ;  and  he  sang  "  Tom  Bowline  " 
with  considerable  relish.  He  had  scarcely  the 
44  cast-iron  quaintness  "  which  Dickens  observed 
in  the  New  England  transcendentalists,  but  he 
had  another  New  England  trait :  he  saw  pretty 

\  tfar^at_times  into  hmnagjaature,  and  found  his 
Jhumor  there.  It  was  his  saving  humor,  finally, 
which  trimmed  the  excesses  of  his  Journal  when 
he  went  into  print. 

Throughout  all  Thoreau's  professions  of  self- 
sufficiency  sound  hauntings  of  dissatisfaction 
and  wistfulness,  which,  Celtic  or  not,  are  by  no 
means  the  equivalent  of  the  indefinite  yearning 
of  the  German  romanticists,  but  give  hint  of  a 
very  real  passion  in  Thoreau's  make-up.  There  are 
traces  of  pure  affection  now  and:  then  which 
Stevenson  was  blind  to.  He  was  guide  and 

/  teacher  for  children  on  berrying  parties.  There 
are  youthful  love  poems  to  be  accounted  for,  and 
rumors  of  a  love-affair.  And  there  is  the  famous 
paragraph  in  "  Walden,"  by  no  means  clear  on  the 


THE  SOLITARY  13 

face  of  it,  and  not  yet  explained,  which  Emerson 
calls  "the  mythical  record  of  his  disappoint 
ments": — 

"  I  long  ago  lost  a  hound,  a  bay  horse,  and  a 
turtle-dove,  and  am  still  on  their  trail.  Many 
are  the  travellers  I  have  spoken  concerning 
them,  describing  their  tracks  and  what  calls  they 
answered  to.  I  have  met  one  or  two  who  had 
heard  the  hound,  and  the  tramp  of  the  horse, 
and  even  seen  the  dove  disappear  behind  a  cloud, 
and  they  seemed  as  anxious  to  recover  them  as 
if  they  had  lost  them  themselves."  S 

So  much  of  personal  wistfulness,  most  of  it 
never  expressed,  in  this  passage  veiled  by  alle 
gory,  suggests  that  there  was  something  with 
which  Thoreau  was  not  completely  satisfied,  and 
that  this  was  neither  the  transcendental  universe 
nor  the  will-o'-the-wisps  of  Beauty  and  the  Pres 
ent,  but  some  one  of  the  human  relationships 
themselves. 


II 

FRIENDSHIP  ;  NATURE 

"  SURELY  joy  is  the  condition  of  life,"  wrote 
this  chanticleer  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is 
perfectly  obvious  that  he  would  have  his  readers 
shun  melancholy  as  they  would  shun  the  Devil. 
He,  at  least  in  his  capacity  of  author  and  lec 
turer,  will  be  no  moping  owl  to  complain  that 
existence  is  desperate.  He  will  not  have  it  that 
an  author's  life  is  hard  - —  he  to  whom  "  to  be  hin 
dered  from  accomplishing"  his  literary  labors 
in  the  Walden  hermitage  (whither  he  went,  as 
every  one  knows,  to  assemble  the  "  Week  "  from 
several  years  of  the  Journal)  "for  want  of  a 
little  common  sense,  a  little  enterprise  and  busi 
ness  talent,  appeared  not  so  sad  as  foolish." 
Tingling  with  idealism,  exalted  by  freedom,  like 
chanticleer  on  tiptoe  quivering  with  expansion, 
Thoreau  could  veil  his  disappointments.1 

1  The  title-page  of  the  first  edition  of  Walden  (1854)  bore 
this  legend,  printed  beneath  a  captivating  woodcut  of  Tho- 
reau's  Walden  "  hermitage,"  and  repeated  on  page  92  of  the 
ensuing  text :  "  I  do  not  propose  to  write  an  ode  to  dejection, 
but  to  brag  as  lustily  as  chanticleer  in  the  morning,  standing 
on  his  roost,  if  only  to  wake  my  neighbors  up."  The  sentence 
signified  more  to  Thoreau  and  his  first  readers  than  is  gener 
ally  realized.  Some  unpublished  pages  of  Thoreau's  Journal 
in  the  possession  of  Mr.  George  3.  Hellman,  of  New  York,  are 


FRIENDSHIP;  NATURE  15 

But  he  did  not  blot  the  sadness  he  could  veil. 
"  He  had  many  reserves,"  says  Emerson,  "  and 

intensely  interesting  as  containing  two  quotations  jotted  down 
by  Thoreau  without  ascription  or  comment  as  if  in  a  common 
place-book,  one  of  which  is  from  Coleridge's  Ode  to  Dejection: 

"  It  were  a  vain  endeavor, 

Theugh  I  should  gaze  forever 
On  that  green  light  that  lingers  in  the  west : 
I  may  not  hope  from  outward  forms  to  win 
The  passion  and  the  life,  whose  fountains  are  within. 

I  see  them  all  so  excellently  fair, 

I  see,  not  feel,  how  beautiful  they  are  ! 

O  Lady  !  We  receive  but  what  we  give, 
And  in  our  life  alone  does  Nature  live." 

At  the  end  of  the  passage  Thoreau  interposes,  "  And  thus 
sounds  another's  wail,"  and  goes  on  to  quote  from  Byron's 
Don  Juan  : 

"  No  more  —  no  more  —  Oh !  never  more  on  me 
The  freshness  of  the  heart  can  fall  like  dew, 

Which  out  of  all  the  lovely  things  we  see 
Extracts  emotions  beautiful  and  new, 

Hived  in  our  bosoms  like  the  bag  o'  the  bee  : 

Think'st  thou  the  honey  with  these  objects  grew? 

Alas  !  't  was  not  in  them,  but  in  thy  power 

To  double  even  the  sweetness  of  a  flower. 

44  No  more  —  no  more  —  Oh !  never  more,  my  heart, 
Canst  thou  be  my  sole  world,  my  universe ! 

Once  all  in  all,  but  now  a  thing  apart, 
Thou  canst  not  be  my  blessing  or  my  curse  : 

The  illusion 's  gone  forever." 

The  pages  on  which  these  lines  are  entered  are  undated,  but 
it  is  safe  to  assume  that  they  belong  among  the  first  pages  of 
the  Journal,  since  Thoreau  did  most  of  his  quoting  early.  The 
two  quotations,  and  more  particularly  the  tone  of  the  remark 
written  between  them,  are  important  as  showing  Thoreau  set 
ting  his  face  early  and  definitely  against  the  winds  of  philo 
sophic  despair  that  blew  throughout  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  lines  from  Coleridge  and  Byron  were,  of  course,  widely 
known  and  felt  in  those  days.  The  lines  from  Coleridge  ex- 


16  HENRY  DAVID   THOREAU 

knew  how  to  throw  a  poetic  veil  over  his  expe 
rience."  He  threw  no  poetic  veil  over  his  Journal, 
which  was  his  experience ;  and  he  left  elsewhere 
a  litter  which  is  easy  to  collect  and  with  the  tes 
timony  of  which  it  is  easy  to  indict  him  on  the 
charge  of  experiencing  disillusionment. 
*^  The  parable  of  the  hound,  the  bay  horse,  and 
the  turtle-dove  is  plainly  a  "mythical  record  of 
disappointments.' '  But  what  disappointments  has 
been  a  question.  What  his  quest  was  he  never 
told ;  not  that  he  was  ignorant  himself,  not  that 
it  was  anything  like  the  blue  flower  of  Novalis, 
a  symbol  of  indefinite  and  infinite  yearning ;  but 
"he  had  many  reserves."  His  quest  was  the 
present,  the  self,  the  secret  of  Nature,  or  Keal- 

actly  expressed  John  Stuart  Mill's  youthful  pessimism.  Mill  con 
fesses  in  the  Autobiography.  When  Tennyson  went  in  1848  to 
visit  the  Reverend  Stephen  Hawker,  the  latter  observed  :  "  His 
temper  seemed  very  calm.  His  spirits  very  low.  When  I  quoted, 
'  O  never  more  on  me,'  etc.,  he  said  they  too  were  his  haunting1 
words."  That  Thoreau  was  not  only  crowing1  to  keep  up  his 
own  courage,  but  was  willing  to  crow  against  the  storm  for  all 
mankind,  is  attested  by  his  pen-sketch  of  chanticleer  on  the 
manuscript  title-page  which  he  drew  up  originally  for  Walden 
and  which  has  been  reproduced  in  the  edition  of  Walden  pub 
lished  by  the  Bibliophile  Society  of  Boston.  Under  the  chan 
ticleer  legend  on  the  same  page  is  a  quotation  from  Sadi  (never 
printed),  which  offers  Thoreau's  solution  of  the  whole  problem 
of  living  —  implicit  obedience  to  Nature  :  "  The  clouds,  wind, 
moon,  sun  and  sky  act  in  cooperation  that  thou  mayest  get  thy 
daily  bread,  and  not  eat  it  with  indifference ;  all  revolve  for 
thy  sake,  and  are  obedient  to  command  ;  it  must  be  an  equi 
table  condition,  that  thou  shalt  be  obedient  also." 


FRIENDSHIP-  NATURE  17 

itj,  say  his  commentators ;  and  if  Thoreau  were 
entirely  unknown  personally,  any  of  these  con 
jectures  might  be  plausible.  Thus  if  one  were 
setting  out  to  prove  the  case  for  uthe  present," 
one  would  find  Thoreau  reminding  himself  that 
he  "must  live  above  all  in  the  present";1  and 
declaring  in  18502  "In  all  my  travels  I  never  ^ 
came  to  the  abode  of  the  present."  But  it  is  clear  | 
enough  that  Thoreau' s  quest  was  not  for  any 
metaphysical  entity,  because  he  wore  his  meta 
physics  as  comfortably  as  any  one.  It  is  clear 
enough  that  this  single  disappointment  of  his 
life  was  not  an  intellectual  but  an  emotional  one, 
and  that  it  arose  in  the  domain  of  the  human  re 
lations.  His  ideal  was  perfection  in  human  inter 
course,  and  his  quest  was  for  an  absolutely  satis 
factory  condition  of  friendship. 
•  The  evidence  is  the  Journal  and  a  passage  in 
the  "Dial."  In  March  of  1842,3  Thoreau  wrote, 
"  Where  is  my  heart  gone?  They  say  men  can 
not  part  with  it  and  live."  A  year  later  he  edited 
for  the  "Dial "  4  passages  from  the  "  Chinese  Four 
Books,"  one  paragraph  of  which,  astonishing  for 
its  resemblances  to  the  famous  parable,  reads  thus : 
"  Benevolence  is  man's  heart,  and  justice  is  man's 
path.  If  a  man  lose  his  fowls  or  his  dogs,  he  knows 
how  to  seek  them.  There  are  those  who  lose  their 

1  Journal,  n,  138.  2  Ibid.,  n,  74. 

8  Ibid.,  i,  350.  *  Dial,  rv,  206. 


18  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

hearts  and  know  not  how  to  seek  them.  The  duty 
of  the  student  is  no  other  than  to  seek  his  lost 
heart."  There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  Tho- 
reau,  putting  his  own  construction  upon  this  pas 
sage,  employed  it  eleven  years  later  in  "  Walden  " 
to  veil  a  personal  longing  which  was  genuine  and 
keen  and  which  demanded  expression  if  only 
through  parable.  A  year  before  "  Walden  "  ap 
peared,  he  was  writing : l  "  No  fields  are  so  barren 
to  me  as  the  men  of  whom  I  expect  everything 
but  get  nothing.  In  their  neighborhood  I  experi 
ence  a  painful  yearning  for  society,  which  cannot 
be  satisfied." 

What  was  Thoreau's  hope  from  abstract  friend 
ship,  and  where  are  the  unmistakable  signs  of  his 
disappointment? 

No  one  ever  spoke  more  loftily  about  friend 
ship.  "  No  one  else,  to  my  knowledge,"  says  Steven 
son,  "has  spoken  in  so  high  and  just  a  spirit  of 
the  kindly  relations ;  and  I  doubt  whether  it  be 
a  drawback  that  these  lessons  should  come  from 
one  in  many  ways  so  unfitted  to  be  a  teacher  in  this 
branch.  .  .  .  The  very  coldness  and  egoism  of 
his  intercourse  gave  him  a  clearer  insight  into  the 
intellectual  basisof  our  warm,  mutual  tolerations." 
No  one  ever  claimed  more  for  friendship.  "  All 
those  contingencies,"  wrote  Thoreau  in  1841,2 
"  which  the  philanthropist,  statesman,  and  house- 
i  Journal,  v,  87.  2  Ibid.,  i,  190. 


FRIENDSHIP ;  NATURE  19 

keeper  write  so  many  books  to  meet  are  simply  and 
quietly  settled  in  the  intercourse  of  friends."  No 
one  ever  expected  more  from  friendship.  In  1843 
he  wrote  to  a  friend,  "  We  always  seem  to  be 
living  just  on  the  brink  of  a  pure  and  lofty  inter 
course  which  would  make  the  ills  and  trivialness 
of  life  ridiculous.  After  each  little  interval,  though 
it  be  but  for  the  night,  we  are  prepared  to  meet 
each  other  as  gods  and  goddesses." 

At  the  same  time,  no  one  was  ever  more  disap 
pointed  in  friendship.  Thoreau  speaks  his  disap 
pointment  in  two  voices.  One  voice  is  for  the  world 
which  he  has  found  inadequate,  has  the  tone  of 
sharp  reproof  and  the  manner  of  the  cynic  philoso 
pher,  and  expresses  contempt  for  "  that  old  musty 
cheese  that  we  are."  "  In  what  concerns  you  much," 
he  wrote,  "do  not  think  that  you  have  compan 
ions  ;  know  that  you  are  alone  in  the  world."  "  How 
alone  must  our  life  be  lived !  We  dwell  on  the  sea 
shore,  and  none  between  us  and  the  sea.  Men  are 
my  merry  companions,  my  fellow-pilgrims,  who 
beguile  the  way  but  leave  me  at  the  first  turn  of 
the  road,  for  none  are  travelling  one  road  so  far 
as  myself."  It  was  in  this  key  that  his  acquaint 
ances  found  him  strung ;  it  was  the  man  u  who 
never  felt  himself  except  in  opposition"  that 
Emerson  is  complaining  of  here  in  his  Journal:1 
"  If  I  knew  only  Thoreau,  I  should  think  cobper- 
1  Emerson's  Journal,  ix,  15. 


20  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

ation  of  good  men  impossible.  Must  we  always 
talk  for  victory,  and  never  once  for  truth,  for 
comfort,  and  joy?  Centrality  he  has  and  pene 
tration,  strong  understanding,  and  the  higher 
gifts  —  but  all  this  and  all  his  resources  of  wit 
and  invention  are  lost  to  me  in  every  experiment, 
year  after  year,  that  I  make,  to  hold  intercourse 
with  his  mind.  Always  some  weary,  captious 
paradox  to  fight  you  with,  and  the  time  and  tem 
per  wasted."  Thoreau  is  found  reporting  from  his 
side  a  conversation  with  Emerson  :l  "  p.  M.  — 
Talked,  or  tried  to  talk,  with  R.  W.  E.  Lost  my 
time  —  nay,  almost  my  identity.  He,  assuming  a 
false  opposition  where  there  was  no  difference  of 
opinion,  talked  to  the  wind— r told  me  what  I 
knew  —  and  I  lost  my  time  trying  to  imagine 
myself  somebody  else  to  oppose  him."  It  is  plain 
that  very  little  can  be  learned  about  Thoreau's 
private  feeling  in  the  matter  of  friendship  from 
his  published  writings  or  from  his  conversations; 
in  what  he  published  he  scowled  and  strutted ;  in 
conversation  he  rose  up  like  a  gamecock  at  flut 
ter  of  opposition  and  never  lowered  his  head. 
Emerson  and  Thoreau  are  peers  in  egoism;  they 
tell  nothing  about  each  other. 

Thoreau's  other  voice  is  for  himself ;  its  very 
persistence  distinguishes  him  from  his  transcen 
dental  fellows.  "  Love  is  a  thirst  that  is  never 
1  Journal,  v,  188. 


FRIENDSHIP;  NATURE  21 

slaked,"  he  wrote  in  his  Journal.1  No  one  out 
side  knew  what  was  needed  to  quench  that  thirst, 
precisely  because  no  one  could  even  be  sure  of 
its  existence.  "You  are  not  living  altogether  as 
I  could  wish,"  wrote  Thomas  CholmondeleyT  an 
English  friend,  to  Thoreau  in  1SS6.  "  You  ought 
to  have  society.  A  college,  a  conventual  life  is  for 
you.  You  should  be  the  member  of  some  society  A 
not  yet  formed.  .  .  .  Without  this  you  will  be 
liable  to  moulder  away  as  you  get  older.  Your 
love  for  Nature  is  ancillary  to  some  affection 
which  you  have  not  yet  discovered.  The  great  ^ 
Kant  never  dined  alone.  Once,  when  there  was 
a  danger  of  the  empty  dinner  table,  he  sent  his 
valet  out,  bidding  him  catch  the  first  man  he 
could  find  and  bring  him  in !  So  necessary  was 
the  tonic,  the  effervescing  cup  of  conversation,  to 
his  deeper  labors.  .  .  .  The  lonely  man  is  a  dis 
eased  man,  I  greatly  fear.  See  how  carefully  Mr. 
Emerson  avoids  it ;  and  yet,  who  dwells,  in  all 
essentials,  more  religiously  free  than  he?  ... 
By  such  a  course  you  would  not  lose  Nature. 
But  supposing  that  reasons,  of  which  I  can  know 
nothing,  determine  you  to  remain  in '  quasi '  retire 
ment  ;  still,  let  not  this  retirement  be  too  lonely." 
Thoreau  did  not  need  to  be  told  all  that,  hoping 
as  he  continually  was  in  his  solitude  that  the 
quality  of  affection  would  be  born,  that  the  hound, 
1  Journal,  vra,  231. 


22  HENRY  DAVID   THOREAU 

the  horse,  and  the  turtle-dove  would  pause  and 
wait  for  him  and  consent  to  be  stroked. 

The  history  of  Thoreau's  personal  experiences 
in  friendship  is  written  in  the  early  poems  and 
in  the  Journal.  They  give  one  best  to  under 
stand  what  were  the  nature  and  requirements  of 
his  ideal. 

"  His  biography  is  in  his  verses,"  said  Emer 
son.  The  poems  serve  best,  perhaps,  to  prove 
both  that  his  ideal  of  human  intercourse  was 
with  him  from  the  first,  and  that  the  personal, 
real  affection  for  which  he  yearned  was  never 
the  affection  of  or  for  this  or  that  particular 
person,  but  was  the  sentiment  of  affection,  or 
the  capacity  for  affection,  itself  —  that  thing 
which,  too  late  to  mend  matters,  he  found  had 
been  ruled,  perhaps  without  his  consent,  out  of 
his  life.  There  were  rumors  of  an  unreturned, 
even  martyred  love,  for  one  Ellen  Sewall,  and 
the  lines  from  his  first  contribution  to  the 
"  Dial,"  "  Sympathy,"  - 

"  Each  moment  as  we  nearer  drew  to  each, 
A  stern  respect  withheld  us  farther  yet, 
So  that  we  seemed  beyond  each  other's  reach, 
And  less  acquainted  than  when  first  we  met,"  — i 

have  been  said  to  refer  covertly  to  his  relations 
with  her.  It  is  hinted  darkly  that  "  certain  son 
nets  which  he  addressed  to  her  will  some  day 
see  the  light."  Many  have  sentimentalized  the 


FRIENDSHIP ;  NATURE  23 

legend.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  evidence  that 
Thoreau  ever  loved  any  particular  woman  is  ex 
ceedingly  slight.  To  Mrs.  Emerson  in  1843  he 
writes,  "  You  must  know  that  you  represent  to  me 
woman,  for  I  have  not  traveled  very  far  or  wide." 
Eyes  trained  from  birth  on  infinity,  uncompro 
mising  always  in  friendship  as  in  other  matters, 
it  is  unlikely  that  he  regretted  much  the  absence 
of  a  living  heart.  It  was  his  constitutional  want 
of  so  desirable  and  fundamental  an  organ  —  a 
want  only  accentuated  by  his  philosophy  —  that 
perplexed  and  saddened  him.  The  verses  "  To 
the  Maiden  in  the  East"  cannot  be  autobio 
graphical  so  much  as  expressive  of  the  fastidious 
ideal  of  love  that  Thoreau's  youthful  melancholy 
had  fashioned  out  of  the  egoistic  materials  of 
his  temperament.  Its  strenuous  delicacy  and 
plaintive  laboriousness  are  wholly  characteristic 
of  Thoreau's  early  verse. 

"  It  was  a  summer  eve, 
The  air  did  gently  heave 
While  yet  a  low-hung  cloud 
Thy  eastern  skies  did  shroud  ; 
The  lightning's  silent  gleam, 
Startling  my  drowsy  dream 

Seemed  like  the  flash 
Under  thy  dark  eyelash. 


"  Direct  thy  pensive  eye 
Into  the  western  sky  ; 


24  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

And  when  the  evening  star 
Does  glimmer  from  afar 
Upon  the  mountain  line, 
Accept  it  for  a  sign 

That  I  am  near, 
And  thinking  of  thee  here. 


"  I  '11  walk  with  gentle  pace, 
And  choose  the  smoothest  place, 
And  careful  dip  the  oar, 
And  shun  the  winding  shore, 
And  gently  steer  my  boat 
Where  water-lilies  float, 
And  cardinal-flowers 
Stand  in  their  sylvan  bowers." 

Some  lines  of  the  same  period,  — 

"  My  love  must  be  as  free 
As  is  the  eagle's  wing," 
and 

"  Let  such  pure  hate  still  underprop 
Our  love,  that  we  may  be 
Each  other's  conscience," 

with  their  blither,  cooler  notes,  confirm  the  judg 
ment  that  Thoreau  was  only  idealizing  from  the 
beginning. 

The  Journal,  containing  a  wealth  of  self-rev 
elation  of  a  character  which  a  reader  only  of 
Thoreau's  books  does  not  dream  of,  continues 
the  history  of  Thoreau's  experiences  in  friend 
ship.  "  My  Journal  should  be  the  record  of  my 
love,"  writes  Thoreau  in  the  second  volume.1 

1  Journal,  u,  101. 


FRIENDSHIP  ;  NA  TURE  25 

In  1845  he  first  struck  fire  in  friction  with  so 
ciety,  when  he  was  arrested  for  refusing  to  pay 
taxes ;  and  lost  a  friend  or  two.  Henceforth  his 
path  is  by  no  means  a  smooth  one;  doubts  much 
more  substantial  than  the  yearning  he  could  veil 
with  allegory  assail  him.  A  series  of  extracts 
from  the  Journal  (or  elsewhere)  can,  better  than 
anything  else,  indicate  the  real  qualities  of  Tho- 
reau's  temper  and  the  trend  of  his  feeling  for 
friends  and  for  mankind. 

1850  :l  "  I  love  my  friends  very  much,  but  I 
find  that  it  is  of  no  use  to  go  to  see  them.  I 
hate  them  commonly  when  I  am  near  them." 

1850  :2  "  I  go  and  see  my  friend  and  try  his 
atmosphere.  If  our  atmospheres  do  not  mingle, 
if  we  repel  each  other  strongly,  it  is  of  no  use  to 
stay." 

1851 :3  "I  wish  my  neighbors  were  wilder.""  , 
^  1 851 : 4  "  What  is  the  use  of  going  to  see  people 
whom  yet  you  never  see,  and  who  never  see  you  ? 
I  begin  to  suspect  that  it  is  not  necessary  that  we 
should  see  one  another.  .  .  .  The  society  of  young 
women  is  the  most  unprofitable  I  have  ever  tried. 
They  are  so  light  and  flighty  that  you  can  never 
be  sure  whether  they  are  there  or  not  there.  I 
prefer  to  talk  with  the  more  staid  and  settled, 
settled  for  life,  in  every  sense." 

1  Journal,  n,  98.  2  Ibid.,  n,  109. 

3  Ibid.,  n,  171.  4  Ibid.,  in,  116. 


26  HENR  Y  DA  VI D  THOREA  U 

1851: *  "  Ah,  I  yearn  toward  thee,  my  friend, 
but  I  have  not  confidence  in  thee.  ...  I  am  not 
thou ;  thou  art  not  I." 

1851 :2  "It  would  give  me  such  joy  to  know 
that  a  friend  had  come  to  see  me,  and  yet  that 
pleasure  I  seldom  if  ever  experience." 

1851 : 3  "I  seem  to  be  more  constantly  merged 
in  nature ;  my  intellectual  life  is  more  obedient 
to  nature  than  formerly,  but  perchance  less  obedi 
ent  to  spirit.  I  have  less  memorable  seasons.  I 
exact  less  of  myself.  ...  O  if  I  could  be  dis 
contented  with  myself !  " 

1852  : 4  "  If  I  have  not  succeeded  in  my  friend 
ships,  it  was  because  I  demanded  more  of  them 
and  did  not  put  up  with  what  I  could  get ;  and  I 
got  no  more  partly  because  I  gave  so  little."  ' 

1852 : 5  "  I  go  away  to  cherish  my  idea  of  friend 
ship.  Is  not  friendship  a  great  relation?" 

1856 : 6  "  And  now  another  friendship  is  ended. 
I  do  not  know  what  has  made  my  friend  doubt 
me,  but  I  know  that  in  love  there  is  no  mistake, 
and  that  every  estrangement  is  well  founded.  But 
my  destiny  is  not  narrowed,  but  if  possible  the 
broader  for  it." 

1856:7  "Farewell,  my  friends.  .  .  .  For  a 
long  time  you  have  appeared  further  and  further 

1  Journal,  in,  61.  a  Ibid.,  in,  150. 

8  Ibid.,  in,  6f>.  *  Ibid.,  in,  262. 

*  Ibid.,  iv,  314.  «  Ibid.,  ix,  249. 

'  Ibid.,  viii,  281. 


FRIENDSHIP;  NATURE  27 

off  to  me.  I  see  that  you  will  at  length  disap 
pear  altogether." 

1857  i1  "If  I  should  make  the  least  conces 
sion,  my  friend  would  spurn  me." 

1857 :2  "I  have  tried  them  [men]  .  .  .  they 
did  not  inspire  me  ...  I  lost  my  time.  But  out 
there  [in  Nature]  !  Who  shall  criticise  that  com 
panion?  It  is  like  the  hone  to  the  knife.  .  .  . 
Shall  I  prefer  a  part,  an  infinitely  small  fraction, 
to  the  whole?" 

1857 :3  "It  does  look  sometimes  as  if  the 
world  were  on  its  last  legs.  ...  It  would  be 
sweet  to  deal  with  men  more,  I  can  imagine,  but 
where  dwell  they?  Not  in  the  fields  which  I 
traverse." 

1862 :4  "'The  vine  is  dried  up,  and  the  fig 
tree  languisheth ;  the  pomegranate  tree,  the  palm 
tree  also,  and  the  apple  tree,  even  all  the  trees  of 
the  field,  are  withered;  because  joy  is  withered 
away  from  the  sons  of  men.' ''  / 

"  The  meaning  of  Nature  was  never  attempted  K\ 
to  be  defined  by  him,"  said  Emerson.  It  is  true 
that  Thoreau  did  not  dogmatize  about  Nature. 
Yet,  time  and  again,  in  the  Journal  and  elsewhere, 
he  defined  his  own  personal  relation  to  her  so 
clearly  that  no  one  now  can  mistake  it.  Such 
epithets  as  "  companion,"  "  club,"  "  friend,"  and 

1  Journal,  ix,  279.  2  Ibid.,  ix,  216. 

8  Ibid.,  ix,  205.  *  Excursions, "  Wild  Apples." 


28  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

"bride"  leave  no  uncertain  impression.  Nature 
was  Thoreau's  best,  because  his  only,  friend. 

Alcott  considered  that  Thoreau  had  "  the  pro- 
foundest  passion  for  it  [Nature]  of  any  one  liv 
ing."  Certainly  there  was  no  one  like  him  in 
America.  The  mere  fact  that  he  was  a  philo 
sophic  son  of  Emerson,  who  with  the  aid  of  Cole 
ridge  had  joined  Bacon  with  Plato,  matter  with 
mind,  nature  with  intellect,  experiment  with  dia 
lectic,  sensation  with  ideas,  to  engender  the  tran 
scendental  Nature,  does  not  furnish  a  reason  or 
an  adequate  motive  for  Thoreau's  ruling  passion. 
Emerson,  who  indulged  in  "  a  breath  under  the 
apple  tree,  a  siesta  on  the  grass,  a  whiff  of 
wind,  an  interval  of  retirement"  only  in  order  to 
"revive  the  overtired  brain"  or  in  order  to  re 
store  "  the  balance  and  serenity,"  understood  that 
Thoreau's  bent  was  independent  of  his  own  in 
fluence,  and  declared  that  "  his  determination  on 
Natural  History  was  organic."  If  Emerson  stud 
ied  Nature  to  know  himself,  Thoreau  wedded 
I  Nature  to  know  himself. 

"Remember  thy  Creator  in  the  days  of  thy 
Youth ;  i.e.,  lay  up  a  store  of  natural  influences," 
counseled  Thoreau  in  185 1.1  He  never  came 
out  from  under  those  influences.  As  finely  sus 
ceptible  as  Wordsworth,  as  passionate  to  report 
his  spiritual  experiences,  with  a  personality  more 

1  Journal,  n,  330. 


FRIENDSHIP  •  NA  TURE  29 

pointed  than  Wordsworth's,  he  wore  a  rapt  and 
stealthy  air  in  his  approach  to  Nature  which  no 
one  else  has  shared.  In  the  woods  his  face  is  said  / 
to  have  shone  with  a  light  not  seen  in  the  village. 
For  him  there  was  an  "  ideal  summer  "  blowing 
through  his  brain,  there  was  "  a  nature  behind 
the  common,  unexplored  by  science  or  by  litera 
ture  "  which,  like  the  plumage  of  the  red  election 
bird,  he  hoped  would  "  assume  stranger  and  more 
dazzling  colors,  like  the  tints  of  morning,  in  pro 
portion  as  I  advanced  further  into  the  darkness 
and  solitude  of  the  forest."  He  was  ever  expect 
ing  greater  things ;  "  we  have  hardly  entered  the 
vestibule  of  Nature,"  he  believed.  He  had  a  pas 
sionate  desire  to  exhibit  his  strange  love  as  she 
dressed  for  him,  to  reproduce  these  absolutely 
strange  elements  of  Nature  in  literature.  Lowell's 
earliest  judgments,1  of  Thoreau  that  "  generally 
he  holds  a  very  smooth  mirror  up  to  nature,"  and 
of  his  literary  achievement  that  "  Melville's  pic 
tures  of  life  in  Typee  have  no  attraction  beside 
it,"  by  no  means  did  justice  to  Thoreau's  effort. 
Nor  did  Henry  James's  patronizing  notice  of  "  his 
remarkable  genius  for  flinging  a  kind  of  spirit 
ual  interest  over  these  things  [birds  and  beasts 
and  trees]  "  strike  the  center.  John  Burroughs 
questions  Thoreau's  sincerity :  "  If  Thoreau  had 

1  Pertaining  to  Thoreau  (ed.  S.  A.  Jones,  Detroit,  1901),  pp. 
21,  23. 


30  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

made  friends  with  a  dog  to  share  his  bed  and 
board  in  his  retreat  by  Walden  Pond,  one  would 
have  had  more  faith  in  his  sincerity.  The  dog 
would  have  been  the  seal  and  authentication  of  his 
retreat.  A  man  who  has  no  heart  for  a  dog,  — 
how  can  he  have  a  heart  for  Nature  herself?" 
But  Mr.  Burroughs  has  never  been  quite  able  to 
understand  what  Thoreau  was  doing,  and  has  been 
content  to  observe  that  "he  put  the  whole  of 
Nature  between  himself  and  his  fellows"  ;  forget 
ting  that  for  Thoreau  there  were  no  "  fellows," 
and  only  one  love. 

Thoreau  informed  a  friend  in  1841  that  Na 
ture  was  "  more  human  than  any  single  man  or 
woman  can  be."  In  those  early  days  such  a  re 
mark  amounted  in  Thoreau  to  little  more  than 
a  pleasantry,  an  exercise  in  paradox.  Then  Na 
ture  was  mere  mild  "  Alma  Natura,"  and  meant 
mainly  health  to  Thoreau.  But  very  soon  he  is 
"  struck  with  the  pleasing  friendships  and  una 
nimities  of  Nature,  as  when  the  lichen  on  the 
trees  takes  the  form  of  their  leaves."  Some 
years  later  he  finds  himself  a  party  to  such  a 
"  unanimity  "  :  "  My  acquaintances  sometimes 
imply  that  I  am  too  cold ;  but  each  thing  is  warm 
enough  of  its  kind.  .  .  .  You  who  complain 
that  I  am  cold  find  Nature  cold.  To  me  she  is 
warm."1  "If  I  am  too  cold  for  human  friend- 

1  Journal,  m,  147. 


FRIENDSHIP  •  NATURE  31 

ship,  I  trust  I  shall  not  soon  be  too  cold  for 
natural  influences.  It  appears  to  be  a  law  that 
you  cannot  have  a  deep  sympathy  with  both 
man  and  nature.  Those  qualities  which  bring 
you  near  to  the  one  estrange  you  from  the 
other."1  At  Walden  he  finds  that  "  every  little 
pine  needle  expanded  and  swelled  with  sympathy 
and  befriended  me  " ;  and  in  1854  he  is  heard 
at  his  distance  asserting,  "  I  cannot  spare  my 
moonlight  and  my  mountains  for  the  best  of 
men  I  am  likely  to  get  in  exchange."  "  Because 
joy  is  withered  away  from  the  sons  of  men," 
and  because  friends  of  the  perfect  sort  are  not 
to  be  found  among  the  sons  of  men,  he  hastens 
to  play  the  "  welcome  guest  "  to  Nature.  "  Who  . 
shall  criticise  that  companion  ?  "  Did  not  their 
atmospheres  mingle  ?  Was  not  she  wild  enough 
to  be  a  neighbor  ?  Was  not  she  staid  and  settled 
for  life  ?  Was  not  she  minding  her  own  busi 
ness  superbly?  Was  he  not  she?  was  she  not 
he  ?  Did  not  she  give  all  that  he  demanded  ? 
"  I  love  nature,  because  it  never  cheats  me.  It 
never  jests.  It  is  cheerfully,  musically  earnest," 
he  wrote  in  a  kind  of  desperation.  Was  it  not 
altogether  possible  to  cherish  his  "idea"  of 
friendship  in  the  company  of  Nature  ?  Did  not 
Nature  hold  out  to  him  the  only  hope  of  assur 
ance  that  life  was  yet  joyful  when  he  saw  slavery 

1  Journal,  m,  400. 


82  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

in  Massachusetts  ?  With  his  friends  disappear 
ing  over  the  rim  of  his  little  —  or  big  —  world, 
was  not  Nature  left?  If  men  dwelt  nowhere, 
were  there  not  fields  still  to  traverse?  Who 
could  "communicate  immortality"  to  him  better 
than  Nature? 

"All  nature  is  my  bride,"  announced  Tho- 
reau  in  1857.1  The  bride  and  groom,  it  seems, 
had  been  children  together.  "  Henry  talks  about 
Nature  just  as  if  she  'd  been  born  and  brought 
up  in  Concord,"  observed  Madam  Hoar.  Nature 
was  as  faithful  a  consort  to  Thoreau  as  Ocean 
was  to  Melville's  Moby  Dick :  "  Almost  univer 
sally,"  says  Melville,  "a  lone  whale  proves  an 
ancient  one.  Like  venerable  moss-bearded  Dan 
iel  Boone,  he  will  have  no  one  near  him  but 
Nature  herself ;  and  her  he  takes  to  wife  in  the 
wilderness  of  waters,  and  the  best  of  wives  she 
is,  though  she  keeps  so  many  moody  secrets." 
The  two  died  together,  perhaps :  "  When  he 
had  wakeful  nights,"  writes  Sophia  Thoreau, 
"  he  would  ask  me  to  arrange  the  furniture  so 
as  to  make  fantastic  shadows  on  the  wall,  and 
he  wished  his  bed  was  in  the  form  of  a  shell 
that  he  might  curl  up  in  it." 

When  it  is  said  that  Thoreau  found  in  Nature 
his  ideal  friend,  it  is  meant  that  he  found  in  her 
his  complete  sympathizer.  Hawthorne,  who  as  a 

1  Journal,  ix,  337. 


FRIENDSHIP;  NATURE  33 

young  man  interviewed  Thoreau,  "  said  that 
Thoreau  prided  himself  on  coming  nearer  the 
heart  of  a  pine-tree  than  any  other  human  being." 
Thoreau  has  much  to  say  concerning  this  affin 
ity.  "  Friendship  is  the  unspeakable  joy  and 
blessing  that  results  to  two  or  more  individuals 
who  from  constitution  symmthize.  .  .  .  Who 
are  the  estranged?  Two  friends  explaining."1 
"  Friendship  takes  place  between  those  who  have 
an  affinity  for  one  another  and  is  a  perfectly 
natural  and  regular  event."  "  It  is  hard  to  know 
rocks.  They  are  crude  and  inaccessible  to  our 
nature.  We  have  not  enough  of  the  stony  ele 
ment  in  us."  Nature,  thought  Thoreau,  could 
always  be  trusted  by  one  who  had  this  affinity 
for  her  ;  perhaps  it  was  because  the  affinity  be 
tween  himself  and  Nature  had  not  yet  become 
complete  that  on  a  certain  day,  after  long  de 
liberation  and  many  trials  at  a  mutual  under 
standing,  he  spanked  a  woodchuck  which  would 
keep  pestering  his  premises.  j 

It  is  easy  to  see  where  Thoreau  wished  all 
the  sympathy  to  be.  "  In  the  whole  school,"  says 
Lowell,  speaking  of  Rousseau  and  the  European 
sentimentalists,  "  there  is  a  sickly  taint  ...  a 
sensibility  to  the  picturesque  in  Nature,  not  with 
Nature  as  a  strengthen er  and  consoler,  a  whole 
some  tonic  for  a  mind  ill  at  ease  with  itself,  but 

1  Journal,  HI,  146. 


34  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

with  Nature  as  a  kind  of  feminine  echo  to  the 
mood,  flattering  it  with  sympathy  rather  than 
correcting  it  with  rebuke  or  lifting  it  away  from 
its  unmanly  depression,  as  in  the  wholesomer 
fellow-feeling  of  Wordsworth."  In  Thoreau  there 
is  also  a  taint,  though  it  is  scarcely  a  "  sickly  " 
or  an  "  unmanly "  taint.  Emerson,  who  pro 
nounced  that  "  in  fine  the  ancient  precept, 
Know  thyself,'  and  the  modern  precept,  '  Study 
Nature,'  become  at  last  one  maxim,"  was  him 
self  tainted  with  mad  (if  manly)  intellectual 
egoism.  And  Thoreau,  who  always  went  one 
step  farther  than  Emerson,  went  here  also  one 
step  farther.  When  one  of  Thoreau's  critics  went 
into  forest  retirement  for  two  years,  he  found 
his  imagination  "  awed  and  purified  "  by  con 
tact  with  Nature,  and  found  that  great  peace  of 
mind  was  the  fruit  of  the  fellowship  —  peace  in 
the  presence  oj  Nature's  great,  calm,  "  passion 
less  power."  \  He  considered  then  that  Nature 
to  Thoreau  had  also  been  a  "  discipline  of  the 
will  as  much  as  a  stimulant  to  the  imagination.'* 
-This  is  true  only  with  a  reservation  ;  Thoreau's 
will  ran  free  of  discipline  to  the  extent  that  his 
intellect  ran  wild  in  Nature  ;  and  there  was  lit 
tle  else  than  intellect  in  him  (as  in  the  other 
transcendental  essayists)  to  discipline.  "  He  had 

1  Paul  Elmer  More,  "  A  Hermit's  Notes  on  Thoreau,"  Shel- 
burne  Essays,  i. 


FRIENDSHIP;  NATURE  35 

no  temptations  to  fight  against  —  no  appetites, 
no  passions,"  Emerson  said.  He  lived,  indeed, 
quite  outside  the  circle  of  Good  and  Bad.  When 
Thoreau  told  himself  in  1841,1  "I  exult  in 
stark  inanity,  leering  on  nature  and  the  soul," 
he  surely  was  launching  forth  on  no  career  of 
strict  self-supervision.  As  early  as  1842  he  was 
recommending  the  forest  to  the  readers  of  the 
"  Dial "  for  no  other  reason  than  that  "  the  soli 
tary  rambler  may  find  a  response  and  expression 
for  every  mood"  in  its  depth.  He  refused  to 
like  men  because  they  begrudged  him  indefinite 
expansion  in  their  direction  ; 2  and  came  to  like 
Nature  because  Nature  expected  nothing  of  him. 
"  What  a  hero  one  can  be  without  moving  a 
finger  !  "  he  exclaimed  at  twenty-one.  He  might 
have  exclaimed  in  1850,  "  What  a  lover  of  Na 
ture  one  can  be  without  conceding  a  mood ! " 
His  ideal  was  independence ;  Nature  never  criti 
cized  him.  His  ideal  demanded  something  abso 
lutely  to  be  trusted,  capable  of  any  interpreta- 
tion^inexhaustible  to  any  curious  mind,  giving 
all  and  taking  nothing,  yet  not  complaining  of 
the  sacrifice ;  Nature  was  all  that. 

Thoreau  can  be  very  grandly  condemned  for 

seeking  himself  in  Nature.    But  his  successors 

in   the  poet-naturalist   role  can  be  condemned 

yet  more  for  seeking  themselves  in  Nature.  One 

i  Journal,  i,  175.  2  jwd<>  IX)  209. 


36  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

cannot  say  that  Thoreau  was  a  better  man  than 
they,  or  a  stronger ;  Nature  is  neither  good  nor 
bad,  neither  strong  nor  weak.  One  can  say  that 
Thoreau  is  vastly  more  interesting  than  they. 
At  least  he  is  the  only  one  of  them  all  whose  per 
sonality  is  intrinsically  so  interesting  that  people 
will  long  be  interested  in  preserving  the  books 
in  which  it  is  reflected  on  Nature's  mirror. 

Thoreau  himself  despised  what  he  called  "  the 
mejjly-mouthed  enthusiasm  of  the  [mere]  lover 
of  nature."  One  smiles  to  think  what  he  would 
say  in  these  latter  days.  He  would  deplore  the 
exploitation  by  nature-fakers  and  nature-hacks 
of  the  pathetic  fallacy  in  their  animal  stories. 
He  would  be  monstrously  impajient  with  the  poor 
"nature-study"  of  bird  books  and  tree  books, 
which  prefers  quite  harmless  and  quite  useless 
curiosity  to  dangerous  or  quite  useful  specula 
tion.  He  would  say  that  modern  nature  books 
insult  the  intelligence,  and  are  gauged  for  a  race 
of  school-children.  He  would  not  flatly  agree 
that  "  one  must  live  until  tired,  and  think  until 
baffled,  before  he  can  know  his  need  of  Nature," 
or  that  all  one  goes  to  the  woods  for  is  to  find  a 
place  where  he  can  "  know  without  thinking." 
He  would  have  veneration  for  the  manly  ancl 
painstaking  John  Burroughs,  but  he  would  agree 
that  he  is  no  poet.  He  would  be  unspeakably 
sickened  by  the  hot  hysteria  in  the  books  of 


FRIENDSHIP;  NATURE  37 

Richard  Jefferies,  with  their  "  insatiable  yearning 
for  a  full,  rich  life,"  their  effeminate  groping  for 
a  newer  "  series  of  ideas  "  and  a  newer  "  range  of 
thought  "  than  those  which  have  exercised  the 
world  for  five  thousand  years,  —  or  five  million, 
—  their  morbid  fidgeting  to  be  "  plunged  deep 
in  existence,"  their  sad  conviction  that  "  there 
is  something  more  than  existence,"  their  un 
fledged  talk  of  "  soul-culture,"  their  total  want 
of  originality,  their  spiritual  sterility.  If  one 
seeks  a  point  of  difference  between  Thoreau  and 
Jefferies,  he  need  read  no  further  than  this  sen 
tence  in  the  latter's  "  Story  of  my  Life":  "I 
should  like  to  be  loved  by  every  beautiful  woman 
on  earth  from  the  swart  Nubian  to  the  white  and 
divine  Greek." 

Further  comparisons  are  of  no  value.  "  After 
all,"  said  Walt  Whitman,  reflecting  once  on  the 
difference  between  the  relations  to  Nature  of 
Burroughs  and  Thoreau,  "  I  suppose  outdoors 
had  nothing  to  do  with  that  difference.  The  con 
trast  just  shows  what  sort  of  men  Thoreau  and 
Burroughs  were  to  start  with."/It  has  been  seen 
that  Thoreau's  ideal  of  the  friendly  relation  de 
manded  complete  sympathy  and  toleration  from 
the  second  party.  It  has  been  seen  that  he  found 
no  such  friend  among  mankind,  went  therefore 
to  Nature,  and  was  satisfied  with  her  companion 
ship.  When  Nature  was  about  to  slay  his  body 


38  HENRY  DAVID   THOREAU 

with  consumption,  he  was  not  resentful.  She  still 
was  friend  to  what  he  believed  to  be  the  real  part 
of  him,  his  mind ;  she  still,  permitted  him  to  think 
whatever  he  pleased.  This  exaggerated  confidence 
in  his  own  mind  was  what  Thoreau  had  to  start 
with. 


Ill 

EXPANSION 

A  WHIMSICAL  passage  in  the  Journal  for  1856 1 
intimates  the  character  of  the  demands  which 
Thoreau  made  upon  the  universe  and  which  no 
friend  save  Nature  could  meet :  — 

"Aug.  31.  Sunday,  P.M.— To  Hubbard  Bath 
Swamp  by  boat. 

"  There  sits  bne  by  the  shore  who  wishes  to 
go  with  me,  but  I  cannot  think  of  it.  I  must  be 
fancy-free.  There  is  no  such  mote  in  the  sky  as 
a  man  who  is  not  perfectly  transparent  to  you, — 
who  has  any  opacity.  I  would  rather  attend  to 
him  earnestly  for  half  an  hour,  on  shore  or  else 
where,  and  then  dismiss  him.  He  thinks  I  could 
merely  take  him  into  my  boat  and  then  not  mind 
him.  He  does  not  realize  that  I  should  by  the  s. 
same  act  take  him  into  my  mind,  where  there  is 
no  room  for  him,  and  my  bark  would  surely 
founder  in  such  a  voyage  as  I  was  contemplating. 
I  know  very  well  that  I  should  never  reach  that 
expansion  of  the  river  I  have  in  my  mind,  with 
him  aboard  with  his  broad  terrene  qualities.  He 
would  sink  my  bark  (not  to  another  sea)  and 
never  know  it.  I  could  better  carry  a  heaped  load 

1  Journal,  ix,  46. 


40  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

of  meadow  mud  and  sit  on  the  thole-pins.  There 
would  be  more  room  for  me,  and  I  should  reach 
that  expansion  of  the  river  nevertheless.  .  .  . 
These  things  are  settled  by  fate.  The  good  ship 
sails  —  when  she  is  ready.  .  .  .  What  is  getting 
into  a  man's  carriage  when  it  is  full,  compared 
with  putting  your  foot  in  his  mouth  and  popping 
right  into  his  mind  without  considering  whether 
it  is  occupied  or  not  ?  .  .  .  Often,  I  would  rather 
undertake  to  shoulder  a  barrel  of  pork  and  carry 
it  a  mile  than  take  into  my  company  a  man.  It 
would  not  be  so  heavy  a  weight  upon  my  mind. 
I  could  put  it  down  and  only  feel  my  back  ache 
for  it." 

"  Let  us  know  our  limits,"  proposed  Pascal. 
For  Thoreau,  expansion  beyond  all  limits  was  the 
one  thing  needful.  Friends  are  a  weary  weight, 
companions  are  a  burden.  He  maintained  aus- 

•  terely,  like  the  Oriental  philosopher,  that  "  per 
fect  benevolence  does  not  admit  the  feeling  of 
affection.  .  .  .  Perfect  benevolence  is  the  very 
highest  thing.  ...  It  is  difficult  to  forget  all  the 
men  in  the  world."  His  idea  of  a  friend  was 
"  some  broad  and  generous  natural  person,  as 

\  frank  as  the  daylight,  in  whose  presence  our  be 
havior  will  be  as  simple  and  unconstrained  as 

,  the  wanderer  amid  the  recesses  of  these  hills." 1 
To  be  friends  two  persons  must  be  something 

1  Journal,  1, 442. 


EXPANSION  41 

inhuman  like  the  elements  —  the  daylight  —  to 
each  other,  must  have  universes  that  coincide. 
The  circles  must  not  intersect.  He  morbidly  de 
manded,  as  "  the  essence  of  friendship,"  "  a  total 
magnanimity  and  trust."  "  What  Henry  Thoreau 
needed,"  said  one  who  knew  him,  "  was  to  be 
believed  in  through  thick  and  thin  and  then  let 
alone."  He  asked  for  the  privilege,  not  of  loving, 
but  of  admiring,  and  he  exercised  man's  prerog 
ative,  not  in  being  hurt,  but  in  being  disgusted. 
Mr.  Howells  says  it  was  a  "  John  Brown  type, 
a  John  Brown  ideal,  a  John  Brown  principle," 
for  which  he  was  protagonist,  and  not  a  man 
John  Brown.  The  sympathy  he  called  for  was 
of  a  higher  strain  than  that  in  which  most  men 
sympathize.  It  was  a  sympathy  of  which  the  mind 
could  make  any  disposition  it  chose;  it  could 
be  exercised  on  fish  as  legitimately  as  on  men; 
and  it  was  to  be  paid  for  only  by  toleration,  agree 
ment,  veneration. 

It  has  been  supposed  that  the  experiment  with 
a  community  at  Brook  Farm  suggested  to  Tho 
reau  the  other  experiment  of  perfecting  man  in 
solitude.  Thoreau,  it  is  more  correct  to  say,  was  /j  I 
born  possessed  with  the  demon  of  expansion,  and 
much  more  radically  so  than  the  reader  only  of 
"  Walden,"  with  its  witty  digs  at  busybodies 
and  its  droll  defense  of  loneliness,  can  realize. 
"  Every  man  should  stand  for  a  force  which  is 


42  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

perfectly  irresistible,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend  in 
1848.  "  How  can  any  man  be  weak  who  dares  to 
be  at  all?  .  .  .  What  a  wedge,  what  a  beetle, 
what  a  catapult,  is  an  earnest  man !  What  can 
resist  him? "  Emerson  lamented  that  Thoreau 
did  not  let  his  uncommon  energy  play  in  action. 
It  did  play  and  quiver  within  him  steadily  in 
pure,  vacuous  expansion.  "My  most  essential 
progress  must  be  to  me  a  state  of  absolute  rest," 
announced  Thoreau,  for  whom  absolute  rest  was 
absolute  action,  and  "  engineering  for  all  Amer 
ica"  were  pure  waste  of  time.  If  a  note  in  nine 
teenth-century  romantic  thought  was  the  note  of 
natural  human  expansion,  Thoreau  in  that  cen- 
NT"""  tury,  on  tiptoe  like  chanticleer,  stands  himself 
.  for  pure  expansion  of  the  pure  self.  If  the  ex 
pansion  of  Chateaubriand  was  an  expansion  of 
the  religious  sensibilities,  if  that  of  Wordsworth 
was  benevolent,  if  that  of  Ruskin  was  aesthetic, 
if  that  of  Emerson  was  intellectual,  that  of  Tho 
reau  was  most  purely  egoistic.  "The  cost  of  a 
thing,"  says  he,  "  is  the  amount  of  what  I  call 
]  life  [and  what  others  might  call  self-satisfaction] 
which  is  required  to  be  exchanged  for  it."  There 
was  in  Thoreau  a  rage  for  self-satisfaction,  not 
always  to  be  appeased.  Stevenson  says,  "  He  had 
not  enough  of  the  superficial,  even  at  command." 
He  fled  the  superficial  for  "  centrality,"  and 
wanted  centrality  as  a  caged  lion  wants  liberty. 


EXPANSION  43 

"  As  long  as  possible  live  free  and  uncommitted," 
he  advised  in  "  Walden."  All  he  asked  was  to 
be  let  alone.  As  early  as  his  twentieth  year  he 
was  saying  in  a  college  oration,  "  The  character 
istic  of  our  epoch  is  perfect  freedom  —  freedom 
of  thought  and  action  " ;  and  twelve  years  later 
he  was  telling  himself  that  "  The  only  obligation 
which  I  have  a  right  to  assume  is  to  do  at  any 
time  what  I  think  right."  He  asked  for  elbow- 
room  because  he  never  knew  in  advance  in  what 
direction  he  might  have  to  expand :  "  I  have  no 
more  distinctness  or  pointedness  in  my  yearn 
ings  than  an  expanding  bud.  ...  I  feel  ripe  for 
something,  yet  do  nothing,  can't  discover  what 
that  thing  is.  I  feel  fertile  merely."  This  testi- 
ness  and  this  mere  fertility  are  far  from  be 
ing  the  pleasant  qualities  of  Thoreau.  Stevenson 
says,  "  Thoreau  is  dry,  priggish,  and  selfish," 
and  has  "  none  of  that  large,  unconscious  geni 
ality  of  the  world's  heroes  "  —  probably  a  just 
judgment.  "  A  call  from  Thoreau  in  the  high 
est  sense  meant  business,"  and  "  he  was  on  his 
guard  not  to  be  over-influenced,"  acquaintances 
reported.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  at  times  a 
more  relentless  or  a  more  disagreeable  expan 
sion. 

Expansion  of  the  pure  self  explains  Thoreau's 
attitude  toward  collective  society.  Alcott  con 
sidered  him  "  the  best  republican  citizen  in  the 


44  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

world,  —  always  at  home,  and  minding  his  own 
affairs."  Certainly  the  troubles  of  mankind 
caused  him  no  disturbance.  He  was  as  stead 
fastly  and  religiously  self-centered  as  Cardinal 
Newman  was  concerned  for  the  personal  soul 
when  Newman  held  it  "  better  for  the  sun  and 
moon  to  drop  from  heaven,  for  the  earth  to  fail, 
and  for  all  the  many  millions  on  it  to  die  of 
starvation  in  extremest  agony,  as  far  as  temporal 
affliction  goes,  than  that  one  soul,  I  will  not  say 
should  be  lost,  but  should  commit  one  venial 
sin."  Thoreau  believed,  indeed,  that  God  was  with 
him ;  "  God  does  not  sympathize  with  the  popu 
lar  movements,"  he  said.  He  had  a  Nietzschean 
contempt  for  the  "  gregariousness  "  of  men ;  as 
semblies  of  men  he  said  he  saw  only  as  assem 
blies  of  animals  with  broad  flapping  ears.  Defy 
ing  the  fourth  chapter  of  Ecclesiastes,  he  per 
mitted  himself  to  describe  society  as  "pigs  in 
a  litter,  which  lie  close  together  to  keep  each 
other  warm";1  and  opposed  Fourierism  because 
it  asked  men  to  stand  propped  against  one  an 
other  rather  than  planted,  each  one  firmly,  in 
the  eternal.  A  curt  passage  in  the  "  Maine 
Woods "  reflects  best,  perhaps,  if  vicariously, 
Thoreau's  own  contempt  for  the  intercourse  of 
men :  "  We  had  been  told  in  Bangor  of  a  man 

O 

who  lived  alone,  a  sort  of  hermit,  at  the  dam,  to 
1  Journal,  iv,  307. 


EXPANSION  45 

take  care  of  it,  who  spent  his  time  tossing  a  bul 
let  from  one  hand  to  the  other  for  want  of  em 
ployment.  .  .  .  This  sort  of  tit-for-tat  intercourse 
between  his  two  hands,  bandying  to  and  fro  a 
leaden  object,  seems  to  have  been  his  symbol  for 
society." 

The  course  of  Thoreau's  career  in  expansion 
is  interesting.  From  the  first  he  stood  apart. 
Says  a  college  mate,  "  The  touch  of  his  hand  was 
moist  and  indifferent,  as  if  he  had  taken  up  some 
thing  when  he  saw  your  hand  coming  —  and 
caught  your  grasp  upon  it."  From  the  first  he 
had  determined  to  grow  perfect  after  his  own 
fashion.  "  What  a  hero  one  can  be  without  mov 
ing  a  finger !  "  But  not  until  the  rather  listless 
and  aimless  Thoreau  who  left  college  was  ener 
gized  by  the  spirit  of  Emerson,  not  until  his  re 
markable  essay,  "The  Service,  or  Qualities  of 
the  Recruit,"  written  about  1840,  perhaps  in 
answer  to  the  "  discourses  on  Peace  and  Non- 
Resistance  which  in  1840  were  so  numerous  in 
New  England,"1  and  left  unprinted  in  full  till 
the  edition  of  1902,  does  Thoreau's  policy  of 
spherical  expansion  find  words  2  :  "  We  shall 
not  attain  to  be  spherical  by  lying  on  one  or  the 
other  side  for  an  eternity,  but  only  by  resigning 
ourselves  implicitly  to  the  law  of  gravity  in  us, 
shall  we  find  our  axis  coincident  with  the  celes- 

1  The  Service  (ed.  F.  B.  Sanborn),  p.  vii.         2  Ibid.,  p.  6. 


46  HENRY  DAVID   THOREAU 

tial  axis,  and  by  revolving  incessantly  through 
all  circles,  acquire  a  perfect  sphericity.  .  .  .  The 
brave  man  is  a  perfect  sphere,  which  cannot  fall 
on  its  flat  side,  and  is  equally  strong  every  way." 
The  recruit  in  the  ranks  of  the  Eternal  can  dis 
pense  with  bravado  before  the  world :  "  The 
coward  wants  resolution,  which  the  brave  man  can 
do  without.  .  .  .  His  [the  brave  man's]  bravery 
deals  not  so  much  in  resolute  action,  as  healthy 
and  assured  rest ;  its  palmy  state  is  a  staying  at 
home  and  compelling  alliance  in  all  directions." 
Here  is  the  last  word  needed  to  prove  that  Tho- 
reau  from  the  first  was  self-appointed  to  expand 
spherically  at  the  expense  of  the  world's  gifts — 
friendship,  love,  fame.  Perhaps  more  of  the  es 
sential  Thoreau  can  be  seen  in  "  The  Service  " 
than  in  any  other  twenty-five  pages  of  him. 

Thoreau,  then,  embarks  upon  his  voyage  of  ex 
pansion.  "  It  is  time  now  that  I  begin  to  live," 
he  tells  himself  in  1841.1  When  he  goes  to 
Ktaadn  he  is  reassured  to  find  that  the  forest 
owl  is  "  plainly  not  nervous  about  his  solitary 
life."  In  1850  he  writes  of  accidentally  setting 
fire  to  some  woods,  and  so  destroying  the  prop 
erty  of  several  farmers  ;  but  he  is  more  concerned 
for  himself  than  for  the  farmers,  since  the  woods 
have  been  his  friend,  the  boundary  of  his  visible 
sphere.  In  1851  his  harvest  of  satisfaction  does 

1  Journal,  I,  299. 


EXPANSION  47 

not  appear  so  rich  as  lie  had  expected :  "  Here  I 
am  thirty-four  years  old,  and  yet  my  life  is  almost 
wholly  un expanded.  How  much  is  in  the  germ ! "  * 
He  notices  in  alarm  that  "  the  character  of  my 
knowledge  is  from  year  to  year  becoming  more  dis 
tinct  and  scientific ;  that,  in  exchange  for  views  as 
wide  as  heaven's  cope,  I  am  being  narrowed  down 
to  the  field  of  the  microscope."  But  he  decides  that 
he  has  perhaps  contracted  "  a  fatal  coarseness  "  as 
the  "  resultof  mixing  in  the  trivial  affairs  of  men," 
and  decides  that  human  wishes  are  intrinsically 
and  inevitably  vain  :  "  The  youth  gets  together 
his  materials  to  build  a  bridge  to  the  moon,  or 
perchance  a  palace  or  temple  on  the  earth,  and  at 
length  the  middle-aged  man  concludes  to  build  a 
wood-shed  with  them."  He  takes  Nature  now  to 
wife,  and  henceforth  alternates  between  doubt 
that  his  expansion  is  bearing  the  fruit  for  which 
his  appetite  was  set  and  overemphatic  self-assur 
ance.  In  1853  he  looks  back  wistfully  to  riper 
days  when  he  grew  like  corn  in  the  night :  "  Ah, 
those  youthful  days !  Are  they  never  to  return  ? 
When  the  walker  does  not  too  curiously  observe 
particulars,  but  sees,  hears,  scents,  tastes,  and 
feels  only  himself,  .  .  .  his  expanding  body,  his 
intellect  and  heart.  .  .  .  The  unbounded  universe 
was  his.  A  bird  is  now  become  a  mote  in  his 
eye."  But  he  secures  himself  again  at  Walden, 

1  Journal,  u,  316. 


48  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

whither  he  had  gone  most  confidently  to  "front 
only  the  essential  facts  of  life" :  "  I  learned  this, 
at  least,  by  my  experiment :  that  if  one  advances 
confidently  in  the  direction  of  his  dreams,  and 
endeavors  to  live  the  life  which  he  has  imagined, 
he  will  meet  with  success  unexpected  in  common 
hours."  By  1856  he  is  willing  to  concede  that  the 
fruit  of  expansion  may  be  slight  and  intangible 
after  all :  "  Let  not  your  life  be  wholly  without 
an  object,  though  it  be  only  to  ascertain  the 
flavor  of  a  cranberry,  for  it  will  not  be  only  the 
quality  of  an  insignificant  berry  that  you  will 
have  tasted,  but  the  flavor  of  your  life  to  that 
extent,  and  it  will  be  such  a  sauce  as  no  wealth 
can  buy."1  Life  by  1857  is  empty  to  Thoreau 
beside  the  life  he  sketched  in  "  The  Service " : 
"  In  proportion  as  death  is  more  earnest  than  life, 
it  is  better  than  life."  In  1858  "  the  truth  com 
pels  me  to  regard  the  ideal  and  the  actual  as  two 
things."2  As  early  as  1849  Thoreau  had  observed  3 
that  perhaps  the  tang  in  the  wild  apple's  flavor 
was  the  one  thing  real,  and  could  "  make  my  ap 
parently  poor  life  rich."  In  the  last  few  years,  and 
particularly  after  the  John  Brown  episode,  this 
tang  is  the  only  solace  in  solitude,  the  only  justi 
fication  for  fastidiousness,  is  all  that  remains  in 
Thoreau's  universe,  one  is  tempted  to  conclude. 
The  necessity  of  wildness  is  all  he  can  declaim 
1  Journal,  ix,  37.  2  Familiar  Letters,  332.  8  Ibid.,  174. 


EXPANSION  49 

on  in  "  Walking."  In  the  ninth  volume  of  the 
"  Journal "  he  hints  that  "  life  is  barely  tol 
erable  "  at  times. 

Coming  from  the  pure  mysticism  of  "  The 
Service,"  through  the  practical  self-assurance  of 
"  Walden,"  down  through  the  tortuous  mysticism 
of  the  later  Journal,  to  drain  the  cup  of  expan 
sion,  Thoreau  finds  the  dregs  to  be  a  single 
shriveled  sensation.  The  lion  in  his  cage  purred 
contentedly  in  1840  ;  breathed  easily  and  deeply 
in  pastoral  sphericity  in  the  nature  essays  of  1842 
and  1843  ;  swelled  opulently  and  confidently  in 
the  "  Week " ;  began  to  prowl  along  the  walls 
and  sniff  in  apprehension  at  the  locks  in  "  Wal- 
deii  "  ;  chased  off  all  intruders  next ;  lay  down, 
sore  and  annoyed,  during  the  slavery  debates ; 
rose  up  and  struck  out  with  his  paw  once  when 
prodded ;  lay  down  again  in  the  end  to  sniff  Eter 
nity  for  tang.  Timon  is  shrunk  indeed. 

If  Thoreau  was  born  with  the  germ  of  expan 
sion  within  him,  where  did  he  find  an  external,  a 
philosophical,  sanction  ?  Who  else  preached  sphe 
ricity  before  him?  Who  gave  him  words  and 
ideas  with  which  to  announce  his  programme  and 
report  his  progress? 

The  expansion  seed  certainly  took  wing  in  the 
beginning  from  transcendental  Germany.  But 
transcendentalism  is  one  thing,  and  romanticism 
is  another.  It  has  never  been  determined  just 


50  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

how  much  the  movement  which  grew  out  of  Ger 
man  transcendentalism  and  which  is  called  German 
romanticism  had  to  do  with  American  transcen 
dental  expansion.  It  has  been  suggested  that 
"  the  transcendental  philosophy  of  New  England 
had  absorbed  the  language  and  ideas  of  German 
romanticism,  if  not  its  inmost  spirit";1  and 
that  the  formulae  of  the  school  may  have  been 
transmitted  to  America  through  the  magazines. 
It  is  true  that  there  are  not  a  few  of  the  romantic 
marks  on  the  Americans.  Emerson,  in  the  "  Eng 
lish  Traits,"  said,  "  The  Germans  think  for  Eu 
rope"  ;  Emerson  had  been  given  more  than  an 
outline  of  the  German  programme  by  Coleridge. 
Even  before  the  time  of  the  romanticists,  Zimmer- 
rnann,  a  German  Rousseauist,  had  sent  forth  some 
of  their  ideas  in  his  widely  popular  "  Thoughts  on 
the  Influence  of  Solitude  on  the  Heart,"  and  this 
book  ran  through  ten  editions  in  America  be 
tween  1793  and  1825  ;2  Daniel  Ricketson,  Tho- 
reau's  friend,  had  a  copy  in  his  shanty  when 
Thoreau  visited  him  in  1857.3  Thoreau  himself 
bears  some  resemblance  to  the  German  romanti 
cists  ;  for  him  too  "  paradox  was  the  fine  flower 

1  Paul  Elmer  More,  "  Thoreau  and  German  Romanticism,'* 
Shelburne  Essays,  v. 

2  W.  C.  Goodnight,  German  Literature  in  American  Maga 
zines  prior  to  1S46.   University  of  Wisconsin,  1909. 

8  Journal,  ix,  324.  A  memorandum  by  Thorean  of  the  books 
in  his  library  in  1840  (with  later  additions)  shows  that  he  also 
owned  a  copy  of  Zimmermann's  book,  printed  in  Albany. 


EXPANSION  51 

of  thought."  The  Germans  too  decried  "  extreme 
busyness,"  contemned  the  professions,  and  de 
spised  politics.  Novalis  was  made  much  of  in  the 
"  Dial ";  and  Thoreau  worships  Night  now  and 
then  like  a  Novalis.  It  has  been  claimed  more 
than  once  that  the  parable  of  the  hound,  the 
bay  horse,  and  the  turtle-dove  is  a  direct  remi 
niscence  of  Novalis  and  so  of  Germany. 

But  the  suggestion  for  that  parable  might 
have  come,  the  "  Dial  "  shows,  from  an  Oriental 
Bible  in  an  English  translation.  And  it  is  think 
able  that  most  of  the  so-called  resemblances  be 
tween  the  Americans  and  the  Germans  are  no 
more  than  the  inevitable  resemblances  between 
kindred  minds  trained  on  the  same  theme.  While 
it  can  be  said  that  the  German  influence  on  Eng 
lish  and  American  speculation  was  profound,  it 
can  be  said  with  equal  foundation  that  any  specu 
lation  is  more  or  less  profound  per  se,  and  does 
not  always  ask  for  full  instructions  from  without. 
A  certain  passage  from  Emerson's  Journal  for 
1849  may  reinforce  that  point:1  "Mr.  Scherb 
[a  German  exile  in  Concord]  attempted  last  night 
to  unfold  Hegel  for  me,  and  I  caught  somewhat 
that  seemed  cheerful  and  large,  and  that  might, 
and  probably  did,  come  by  Hindoo  suggestion. 
But  all  abstract  philosophy  is  easily  anticipated, 
—  it  is  so  structural,  or  necessitated  by  the  mould 
of  the  human  mind."  Any  one  who  has  begun  a 
1  Emerson's  Journal,  vm,  69.  1849. 


52  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

"  structural  "  philosophy  like  Spinoza's  appreci 
ates  that  only  a  hint — the  first  definition  —  is 
needed  to  set  the  mind  careering  at  once  through 
the  whole  system  unaided. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  experiment  with  a 
typical  American  transcendental  interest,  and 
measure  how  much  of  German  influence  it  shows. 
It  can  be  shown  that  the  Americans,  and  partic 
ularly  Thoreau,  got  their  Oriental  enthusiasm, 
not  from  the  Germans,  but  directly  from  their 
own  philosophical  needs  and  indirectly  from  Eng 
land.  Thoreau  himself  had  not  a  free  use  of  Ger 
man,1  and  had  no  enthusiasm  for  it.  The  books 
sent  him  by  his  English  friend  Cholmondeley 
were  "  English,  French,  Latin,  Greek,  and  Sans 
krit."  The  Oriental  books  which  Thoreau  be 
queathed  to  Emerson2  were  in  English  and 
French.  In  the  prefaces  to  his  selections  from 
the  Oriental  Scriptures  in  the  "  Dial "  Thoreau 
cites  only  English  editions  —  by  Colebrooke, 
Jones,  Hodgson,  Collie,  Wilson,  or  Wilkins.  He 
need  not  have  gone  outside  his  Chalmers's 
"  Poets,"  which  he  read  without  skipping,  to 
come  under  the  enthusiastic  Sir  William  Jones's 
influence ;  Jones's  Oriental  poems  and  "  Essay 
on  the  Poetry  of  the  Eastern  Nations"  were 
printed  there. 

1  F.  B.  Sanborn,  The  Personality  of  Thoreau  (1906),  p.  36. 

2  Emerson's  Journal,  ix,  419. 


EXPANSION  53 

By  what  chance  Thoreau  came  to  read  the 
Orientals,  or  what  editions  he  read,  is  of  less 
consequence,  perhaps,  than  why  they  were  con 
genial,  and  who  interested  him  in  them.  The 
encouragement  to  this  reading,  it  would  seem, 
came  solely  from  Emerson  and  thence  from  Eng 
land  —  always,  of  course,  against  the  broad  back 
ground  of  European  transcendental  assertion  of 
the  moral  and  intellectual  dignity  of  man.  Emer 
son,  "  who,  bland  angel  as  he  was,  very  much 
wanted  his  own  way,"  "  invented  or  elected  his 
philosophy,"  one  of  the  most  careful  of  writers 
has  said.1  And  it  is  perfectly  reasonable  to  agree 
that,  born  with  a  capacious  mind,  moved  by 
the  sentiment  of  intellectuality,  enchanted  by 
glimpses  into  Coleridge's  bottomless  intellect, 
quick  to  accept  Coleridge's  policy  of  reflection 
for  reflection's  sake,  and  committed  to  compre 
hensiveness  of  intellect  as  the  definition  and  goal 
of  genius,  Emerson  might  have  gone  quite  in 
dependently,  and  not  as  an  impoverished  bor 
rower,  to  whatever  works  seemed  to  him  profound, 
and  have  taken  away  what  caprice  or  plan  dic 
tated.  Emerson  owned  one  of  the  first  copies  of 
the  "  Bhagavad-Gita  "  in  America  ; 2  he  lent  it 
freely;  and  he  got  it  read  much  more  widely 
than  the  Harvard  Library  copy  was  read.  It  was 

1  W.  C.  Brownell,  "  Emerson,"  American  Prose  Masters. 

2  Nation  (New  York),  May  12,  1910,  p.  481. 


54  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

to  English  or  French  scholars,  and  not  to  Ger 
man  scholars,  that  the  American  transcendental- 
ists  went  —  Jones,  Colebrooke,  Mackintosh,  Wil 
son,  Wilkins,  Lee,  Wilford,  Marshrnan,  and 
Collie,  descendants  of  a  long  line  of  purely  Eng 
lish  Orientalists  hailing  from  the  fourteenth  cen 
tury.  German  and  English  scholars  of  the  early 
nineteenth  century  vied  with  each  other  for  rec 
ognition  as  inspirers  of  European  Oriental  en 
thusiasm.  The  matter  can  hardly  be  settled.  It  is 
enough  to  show  that  Emerson's  and  Thoreau's 

/  Orientalism  could  have  been  an  independent 
growth  on  English  soil. 

The  point  has  been  made  that  Thoreau  re 
ceived  the  breath  of  the  German  philosophy,  but 
44  always  .  .  .  with  differences  caused  by  other 
surroundings  and  traditions." 1  These  differences 
are  really  more  interesting  than  the  resemblance 

.  itself.  The  two  schools  are  exactly  alike  in  that 
they  preach  infinite  expansion  of  self.  But  when 

'  it  is  considered  that  the  Americans  lived  what 
they  thought,  as  Novalis  did  not ;  that  the  aspi 
ration  of  the  Americans  was  as  much  for  a  whole 
people  as  it  was  for  their  esthetic  selves ;  that 
the  Germans  often,  the  Americans  never,  in 
clined  to  the  fleshly,  —  it  is  easy  to  see  very 
important  details  of  dissimilarity.  There  is  a 

1  Paul  Elmer  More,  "  The  Centenary  of  Longfellow,"  Shel- 
burne  Essays,  v. 


EXPANSION  55 

greater  difference  than  any  of  those.  The  expan 
sion  of  the  Germans  was  emotional ;  that  of  the 
Americans  was  intellectual.  And  Thoreau  took 
his  cue,  not  from  Germany  at  all,  but  from 
America ;  he  took  it  from  the  New  England  in 
tellectual  renaissance  and  from  Emerson,  who 
himself  was  much  more  a  Platonist  than  he  was 
a  German  idealist.1 

"  No  truer  American  ever  lived,"  said  Emer 
son.  Probably  no  one  not  a  Yankee  could  have 
written  so  shrewd  and  yet  so  earnest  a  book  as 
"  Walden."  Thoreau  at  least  was  writing  what 
he  believed  to  be  the  truth  for  America,  and  not 
solely  what  pleased  his  own  fancy ;  he  did  not 
want  to  live  alone  merely  to  be  eccentric,  but 
that  he  might  be  normal  —  to  the  brim  a  nor 
mal  American.  And  to  be  a  normal  American  in 
1840  was  neither  to  have  forgotten  one's  Puritan 
heritage  nor  to  have  failed  to  cast  one's  self  in 
with  the  intellectually  emancipated.  De  Tocque- 
ville  said  that  the  Americans  were  a  nation  with 
out  neighbors,  and  given  to  moral  self-contem 
plation.  By  1840  New  England  had  by  no  means 
forgotten  the  profound  religious  experiences  of 
such  men  as  Cotton,  Wheelwright,  Vane,  Penn, 
John  Woolman,  Jonathan  Edwards,  Nicholas 
Gilman,  and  Samuel  Hopkins;  nor  had  it  for 
gotten  Puritanism,  the  firmness  of  whose  estab- 
1  J.  H.  Harrison,  The  Teachers  of  Emerson.  (1910.) 


56  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

lishment  in  even  Thoreau's  transcendental  mind 
is  attested  by  the  fact  that  he  denounced  what 
he  did  not  believe  in  —  for  example,  money  — 
as  not  only  foolish  but  sinful.  It  was  that  ances 
tral  Puritan  voice  that  made  Thoreau  hearken 
to  Confucius  when  he  recommended  "  blameless- 
ness  of  life,"  or  "  simple  truth  and  earnestness." 
Neither  was  he  unaware  that  a  veritable  renais 
sance  of  intellect  had  set  in  in  New  England 
during  his  boyhood,  and  that  what  he  called 
"brain  rot"  was  on  the  way  to  being  cured. 
New  England  itself  had  subscribed  to  sphericity. 
Conscious  of  new  spiritual  liberty  and  nearly 
isolated  from  Europe  during  the  thirty  years  of 
comparative  international  quiet  following  the 
Napoleonic  wars,  coming  in  that  period  to  take 
account  of  its  intellectual  stock  and  finding  it 
slim,  craving  a  spiritual  exaltation  commensur 
able  with  the  new  territorial  and  numerical  ex 
pansion  of  America,  and  piqued  by  such  insults 
from  Europe  as  Sydney  Smith's  poser  in  the 
"Edinburgh  Keview "  in  1820  —  "Who  reads 
an  American  Book  ?  "  —  it  was  inevitable  that 
some  of  the  doughtier  spirits  should  propose  to 
wage  a  grim  spiritual  campaign.  Such  spirits, 
wearing  self-reliance  for  a  charm,  and  deplor 
ing  the  meaner  "  busyness  "  of  their  fellow  citi 
zens,  must  have  tired  of  "  bargain  and  corrup 
tion  "  politics,  must  have  scorned  to  notice  the 


EXPANSION  57 

twenty-nine  benevolent  and  charitable  institu 
tions  that  had  grown  up  in  Boston  between  1810 
and  1840,  must  have  disdained  Fourier  and  Al 
bert  Brisbane,  and  the  Society  for  the  Diffusion 
of  Useful  Knowledge,  must  have  held  fastidious 
noses  up  above  the  penny  newspapers  which  tried 
to  be  all  things  to  all  men  and  were,  it  was 
charged,  not  very  much  of  one  thing  to  any. 

Specifically,  Thoreau's  doctrine  of  spherici 
came  from  Emerson.  Emerson,  optimistically 
announcing  that  "  all  things  show  that  on  every 
side  we  are  very  near  to  the  best " ;  Emerson, 
preaching  his  philosophy  of  "  circles "  with  un 
rivaled  zeal ;  Emerson,  declaring  that  "  there  is 
no  end  in  Nature,  but  every  end  is  a  beginning ; 
that  there  is  always  another  dawn  risen  on  mid- 
noon,  and  under  every  deep  a  lower  deep  opens  "; 
Emerson,  having  it  that  "  the  only  sin  is  limi 
tation,"  caught  and  held  and  made  Thoreau 
—  or,  as  one  man  had  it,  "  ruined  "  him.  "  No 
one  meeting  Emerson  was  ever  the  same  again." 
Perhaps  a  conversation  with  Emerson  furnished 
Thoreau  a  hint  for  "  The  Service,"  for  Emerson 
wrote  this  in  his  essay  "  Character  "  :  "  The  face 
which  character  wears  to  me  is  self-sufficingness 
.  .  .  character  is  centrality,  the  impossibility  of 
being  displaced  or  overset."  It  is  possible  that 
Thoreau  saw  a  challenge  in  Emerson's  essay, 
"The  Transcendentalist "  in  the  "Dial"  for 


58  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

1842,  which  contained  a  clause,  "  There  is  no 
pure  Transcendentalist."  Emerson  has  much  to 
say  upon  the  relations  between  his  ideas  and 
Thoreau's :  "  Thoreau  gives  me,  in  flesh  and  blood 
and  pertinacious  Saxon  belief,  my  own  ethics. 
He  is  far  more  real,  and  daily  practically  obey 
ing  them,  than  I." 1  "  I  am  very  familiar  with 
all  his  thoughts,  —  they  are  my  own  quite  origi 
nally  drest."  2  Certainly  Thoreau's  ideas  of  Na 
ture,  Love,  Friendship,  Sphericity,  are  Emer 
son's —  Emerson's  pointed  and  trimmed  with 
Thoreau's  tools.  And  certainly,  with  Emerson's 
wide  reading  in  Herbert,  Henry  More,  Milton, 
Coleridge,  Thomas  Taylor,  Plato,  Plotinus,  and 
the  Oriental  Scriptures  at  hand,  Thoreau  did  not 
need  to  look  to  Germany  for  intellectual  day.  He 
had  with  him  always  one  of  the  best  examples  of 
the  intellectual  gormandizer  the  world  has  seen. 
When  Thoreau's  most  discriminating  critic3 
defines  the  larger  differences  between  Thoreau 
and  the  Germans,  he  implies  that  Thoreau  was, 
upon  the  whole,  not  altogether  as  rapacious  for 
expansion  as  were  the  Germans.  Thus,  finding 
on  both  the  marks  of  romanticism,  "  aloofness," 
"irony,"  "sacred  idleness,"  "musical  revery," 
"  communion  with  Nature,"  and  "  contempt  for 
limitations,"  he  goes  on  to  say  for  Thoreau  that 

1  Emerson's  Journal,  vin,  303.  2  Ibid.,  VI,  74. 

8  More,  "  Thoreau  and  German  Romanticism." 


EXPANSION  59 

because  he  expanded  from  the  base  of  character 
and  intellect  rather  than  from  the  base  of  sensi 
bility  and  the  flesh,  he  therefore  exercised  his  will 
for  discipline  of  self,  exercised  a  "  higher  self- 
restraint."  The  critic  suggests  that  several  in 
termediary  influences  are  responsible  for  this 
element  of  restraint  in  the  American,  — "  the 
inheritance  of  the  Puritan  religion,"  "  the  British 
notion  of  practical  individualism,"  "  the  lesson  of 
Wordsworth's  austerity  in  the  devotion  to  Na 
ture,"  the  "  spirit  of  fine  expectancy  "  in  the 
seventeenth-century  poets,  the  "  incalculable 
force  of  Emerson's  personality  "  ;  and  one  might 
add  the  discipline  of  the  classics,  the  discipline 
of  manual  labor,  and  the  example  of  the  Indian 
race.  It  can  be  questioned  whether  the  differ 
ence  between  the  Germans  and  Thoreau  was  the 
difference  between  men  who  exercised  no  re 
straint  at  all  and  a  man  who  exercised  a  "  higher 
self-restraint."  It  is  no  evidence  in  Thoreau's 
favor  that  he,  with  all  the  transcendentalists, 
dealt  all  the  while  in  "  character  "  and  "  intel 
lect,"  or  that  he  lived  in  a  "  dry  light."  Further 
glances  into  the  Journal  and  other  localities  will 
reveal  what  use  Thoreau  and  Emerson  made  of 
the  terms  "  intellect  "  and  "  character,"  and  what 
actually  came  of  Thoreau's  "  dry  light." 

There  is  no  evidence  that  Emerson  and  Tho 
reau  believed  in  training  or  did  train  their  intel- 


60  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

lects ;  there  is  no  end  of  evidence  that  they  en 
gaged  instead  in  a  very  noble  and  care-free  kind 
of  intellectual  debauch  and  indulged  what  has 
been  styled  their  "  intellectual  pride  and  moral 
confidence  "  to  the  mortal  limit.  "  There  is  no 
past  in  the  soul "  —  no  building  of  ideas  —  said 
Thoreau.  They  believed  heart  and  soul  in  doing 
as  one  likes,  in  being  as  good  as  one  can  in  any 
way  one  likes,  and  in  thinking  as  industriously 
as  one  can  in  any  direction  he  fancies.  Spes 
sibi  quisque,  from  Virgil,  was  Thoreau's  motto 
for  "  The  Service."  Thoreau  went  out  to  Wai- 
den  Pond  in  order  to  "  have  a  little  world  all 
to  himself "  .  .  .  "  not  cumbered  and  mortified 
by  his  memory."  Emerson  and  Thoreau  had 
ideals ;  their  ideals  were  themselves.  They  were 
intellectual  and  moral,  but  intellectual  and  moral 
all  to  themselves.  They  cared  to  be  conscious  of 
no  limits.  "  Who,"  asks  Thoreau  in  "Walking," 
"but  the  Evil  One  has  cried  Whoa!  to  man 
kind?"  The  "spirit  of  fine  expectancy"  of  the 
seventeenth-century  poets  would  not  have  owned 
New  England  in  1850.  Herbert's  face  was  turned 
upward  ;  Emerson's  and  Thoreau's  faces  inward. 
Herbert  pleaded  with  God  for  vision ;  Emerson 
and  Thoreau  only  pricked  themselves  perpetu 
ally  on  to  further  spiritual  adventures.  Herbert's 
"  morning  "  was  that  time  of  man's  life  when 
he  is  permitted  to  forget  himself  and  glimpse 


EXPANSION  61 

the  universal  order.  Emerson's  and  Thoreau's 
"  morning "  was  a  perpetual  period  in  which 
men  should  be  "  awake  "  —  that  is,  have  "  life, 
and  knowledge "  of  themselves.  The  self-con 
scious,  thin  patriarchal  integrity  they  thought 
they  had  reclaimed  from  civilization  the  patri 
archs  would  not  recognize  at  all. 

Emerson  and  Thoreau  led  a  headlong  revolt 
against  "  natural "  sympathy  only  to  plunge 
into  shoreless  seas  of  intellectual  and  moral 
egotism.  Mind-intoxicated  men,  cutting  their 
own  channels,  thinking  as  they  pleased,  keep 
ing  their  foreheads  smooth,  hungry  for  ideas 
and  uncritical  of  ideas  when  they  come  along, 
dreading  to  repeat  themselves,  needing  "  infinite 
room  "  to  utter  their  thoughts  in,  musing  to  sa 
tiety,  boasting  native  potential  omniscience, 
refusing  to  argue  but  eager  to  declaim,  never 
comparing  but  always  uttering,  setting  thought 
above  knowledge  and  instinct  above  reflection, 
more  hospitable  to  thoughts  than  to  men,  they 
furnish  beautiful  examples  of  the  behavior 
of  wild  nature  in  intellect.  Thinking  to  defy 
Hume's  conclusions  concerning  "the  weakness 
of  human  reason,  and  the  narrow  limits  to  which 
it  is  confined,"  they  denied  any  limits  whatever. 
As  Rnskin  said,  "  Men  are  as  their  tastes,"  and 
Carlyle  said,  "  Men  are  as  they  are  strong,"  so 
these  said,  "  Men  are  as  they  think  bound- 


62  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

lessly."  Fondly  imagining  their  intellectual  sys 
tem  to  be  organized  on  the  grandest  possible  ulti 
mate  plan,  they  careered  on  with  no  immediate 
organization  whatever ;  identifying  "  centrality  " 
of  Emersonian  thought  with  universal  gravita 
tion,  they  believed  themselves  safe  and  sped  on 
after  new  sensations.  With  no  conception  of  that 
kind  of  intellectual  organization  which  Newman, 
for  one,  demanded,  they  tore  on  their  way  to 
flaunt  endlessly  those  faculties  which  Newman 
shuddered  to  contemplate  —  "  fierce,  wilful  hu 
man  nature,"  "  the  wild  living  intellect  of  man," 
"  the  immense  energy  of  the  aggressive,  capri 
cious,  untrustworthy  intellect." 

Neither  Emerson  nor  Thoreau  was  free  from 
the  intellectual  demon;  neither  Emerson  nor 
Thoreau  escaped  those  intellectual  perils  which 
are  inevitably  contingent  upon  so  fatally  easy  a 
system  as  theirs  and  which  have  been  visible 
since  among  the  Christian  Scientists.  Neither 
Emerson  nor  Thoreau  wound  up  his  intellectual 
career  with  half  the  satisfaction  that  he  began  it. 
That  was  not  possible  when  their  procedure  was 
so  prodigal.  Thoreau  is  to  be  seen,  as  early  as 
his  college  days,  recommending  the  keeping  of  a 
Journal  in  order  to  conserve  one's  thoughts  and 
to  be  able  to  oversee  one's  mind  ;  and  he  declares 
that  thoughts  come  "  spontaneously,"  "  suggest 
themselves."  An  intellectual  epicure  at  twenty, 


EXPANSION  63 

he  is  an  intellectual  hero  at  thirty,  when  he  says, 
"  All  I  can  say  is  that  I  live  and  breathe  and 
have  my  thoughts,"  and  when  he  believes  that 
"  to  know,  is  to  know  good."  1  Miss  Fuller  said 
she  "  had  a  pleasant  time  with  her  mind."  So 
Thoreau  in  his  prime  played  with  his  mind.  He 
tells,  in  the  Journal  for  185 1,2  how  "  I  had  a 
thought  this  morning  before  I  awoke.  I  endeav 
ored  to  retain  it  in  my  mind's  grasp  after  I  be 
came  conscious,  yet  I  doubted,  while  I  lay  on  my 
back,  whether  my  mind  could  apprehend  it  when 
I  should  stand  erect.  It  is  a  ...  difficult  feat  to 
get  up  without  spilling  your  morning  thought." 
Certain  parts  of  the  Journal  breathe  no  such  self- 
satisfaction  as  this.  There  are  to  be  read  what 
for  Thoreau  are  long,  incoherent  passages  which 
betray  that,  along  with  his  loss  of  confidence  in 
sphericity  and  his  unspoken  pain  at  the  loss  of 
friends,  he  suffered  pretty  frequently  a  diminu 
tion  of  that  "  hard  mentality,"  that  "  grip  and 
exactitude  of  mind,"  that "  mental  materialism" 
which  Emerson  praised  in  George  Herbert.  Here 
is  no  noble  mind  overthrown  ;  but  here  are  men 
tal  gifts  squandered  somewhat  from  want  of 
shaping  and  direction. 

If  Thoreau  had  been  in  truth  what  Emerson 
believed  him,  and  what  he  may  have  wished  to 

1  "  Natural  History  of  Massachusetts,"  Excursions. 

2  Journal,  in,  121. 


64  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

believe  himself,  &  "  perfect  piece  of  stoicism," 
there  would  have  been  shaping  of  a  kind ;  but 
one  cannot  detect  a  note  of  genuine  stoicism  in 
all  of  him.  One  cannot  confuse  Thoreau  with 
Marcus  Aurelius,  falling  back  on  Providence 
and  universal  philanthropy.  Thoreau  was  not 
weary  of  life,  saw  nothing  in  it  to  hide,  heard 
nothing  in  it  that  should  be  talked  down.  He 
surrendered  himself  to  no  universal  law  he  could 
not  understand,  resigned  himself  to  nothing  he 
did  not  like.  He  was  no  "  strong  and  noble 
spirit  contending  against  odds."  His  philosophy 
was  no  "  reaction  against  chronic  anxiety."  Tho 
reau  liked  to  think  that  he  was  something  of  a 
Cato,  and  read,  it  seems  pretty  carefully,  in 
Cato,  Varro,  and  Columella.  But  there  is  a  vast 
difference  between  the  citizen  Cato  and  the  sen 
timentalist  Thoreau.  Cato  embraced  simplicity 
as  a  duty ;  Thoreau  embraced  it  as  a  luxury. 
Cato  lived  in  Rome ;  Thoreau  lived  in  "  a  little 
world  of  his  own."  Cato  had  a  rough,  sensible 
Lincolnian  humor ;  Thoreau  priggishly  exor 
cised  humor  from  his  books.  Thoreau  extrava 
gantly  claimed  everything  for  solitude ;  of  Cato, 
Livy  says,  Nulla  ars  neque  privatce  neque  pub' 
licce  rei  gerendoB  ei  defuit. 

Thoreau  was  an  out-and-out  Epicurean.  It  is 
not  true  that  he  "  wanted  little."  He  wanted 
everything.  Stevenson  says  he  "loved  to  in- 


EXPANSION  65 

dulge  the  mind  rather  than  the  body,'*  and  was 
"  an  Epicurean  of  the  nobler  sort,"  —  "  cruel  in 
the  pursuit  of  goodness,  morbid  in  the  pursuit 
of  health  .  .  .  that  valetudinarian  healthfulness 
which  is  more  delicate  than  sickness  itself." 
"  Economy  is  the  second  or  third  cousin  of  Ava 
rice,"  goes  the  proverb.  Thoreau's  absolute  sense 
of  security  in  the  world  was  not  stoical  but  epi 
curean  ;  he  said, "  A  man  should  feed  his  senses 
on  the  best  the  land  affords."  Marcus  Aurelius 
was  a  Stoic  because  he  kept  an  inner  self  to 
which  he  could  retire  for  ease  and  reassurance  in 
the  midst  of  a  distressed  life.  Thoreau  avoided 
a  distressed  life  in  order  to  have  perpetual  peace, 
to  monopolize  his  inner  self.  The  world  could 
not  seem  hard  to  him,  because  he  was  padded 
on  all  sides  by  his  ego.  He  wrote,  in  "The 
Service,"  "  Necessity  is  my  eastern  cushion  on 
which  I  recline.  ...  I  ask  no  more  but  to  be 
left  alone  with  it.  ...  How  I  welcome  my  grim 
fellow,  and  walk  arm  in  arm  with  him  !  .  .  .  I 
love  him,  he  is  so  flexible,  and  yields  to  me  as 
the  air  to  my  body.  I  leap  and  dance  in  his 
midst,  and  play  with  his  beard  till  he  smiles." 
Finally,  here  is  this  rhapsody  from  the  Jour 
nal  : l  "  The  luxury  of  wisdom !  the  luxury  of 
virtue!  Are  there  any  intemperate  in  these 
things?"  "  He  left  all  for  the  sake  of  certain 

1  Journal,  n,  269. 


66  HENRY  DAVID  THOEEAU 

virtuous  self-indulgences,"  says  Stevenson.  He 
never  gave  up  any  vital  part  of  himself  from 
respect  for  universal  law.  He  gave  up  only 
what  he  believed  he  did  not  need.  "  It  is  the 
greatest  of  all  advantages  to  enjoy  no  advantage 
at  all,"  he  wrote.1  He  was  what  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  said  Diogenes  was,  "  more  ambitious  in 
refusing  all  Honours,  than  Alexander  was  in  re 
jecting  none."  He  made  no  renouncements  out 
right  ;  what  renouncements  he  seems  to  have  made 
he  made  only  after  he  had  gained  his  whole  will 
and  got  his  own  way.  He  who  wept  at  twenty  to 
stay  in  Concord  affected  thereafter  to  scorn  lo 
cality.  He  who  evaded  the  crisis  in  which  most 
youths  choose  professions  was  thereafter  a  loud 
despiser  of  professions  "  on  principle."  He  re 
jected  "  the  shocking  and  passionate,"  2  not  be 
cause  he  had  outgrown  them,  but  because  he 
was  without  certain  passions.  The  Stoic  ideal  is 
indifference  to  things  we  cannot  command.  Tho- 
reau  said,  "  I  do  not  think  much  of  the  actual;" 
"  Whatever  actually  happens  to  a  man  is  won 
derfully  trivial  and  insignificant."  3  But  he  was 
far  from  indifferent  to  a  number  of  things  —  his 
home,  his  freedom,  his  sphericity,  his  books,  his 
boat,  his  Journal.  If  his  Journal  one  day  had 
burned,  he  would  no  doubt  have  jerked  the  long 
beard  of  Necessity  in  something  like  anger, 
i  Journal,  ix,  160.  2  Ibid.,  n,  3.  8  Ibid.,  n,  43,  44. 


IV 

THE    SPECIFIC 

THOREAU  is  much  more  than  an  expansive 
bore.  As  all  the  greater  transcendental! sts  had 
for  saving  remnants  native  qualities  more  vital 
and  permanent  than  their  rhapsodic  and  their 
German  ingredients,  —  Carlyle  his  humor  and 
his  seer's  powers  and  Emerson  his  flashing  in 
tellect,  —  so  Thoreau  has  one  natural  gift  which 
joins  him  to  the  ordinary  world  and  saves  him 
to  posterity.  That  is  his  genius  for  the  specific, 
his  concreteness  of  character  arid"  viyiuii. Tins 
genius  is  important  both  in  his  personality  and 
in  his  authorship. 

Thoreau  is  significant  to  culture  in  great  meas 
ure  because  his  personality  is  definite  and  un 
mistakable  —  "  as  free  and  erect  a  mind  as  any 
I  have  ever  met,"  wrote  Emerson  in  his  Journal 
after  first  meeting  Thoreau.  There  is  a  stanch^ 
and  crackling  integrity  about  the  man  which 
holds  him,  even  at  the  moment  of  his  most  ex 
pansive  departure,  safe  above  the  Romantic 
stupor  of  self -contemplation  and  self  -absorption ;. 
when  one  reads  this  passage  in  a  letter  of  1854, 
one  need  not  fear  for  Thoreau's  self-possession : 
"  I  left  the  village  and  paddled  up  the  river. 


68  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

...  I  was  smoothed  with  an  infinite  stillness. 
I  got  the  world,  as  it  were,  by  the  nape  of  the 
neck,  and  held  it  under  in  the  tide  of  its  own 
events,  till  it  was  drowned,  and  then  I  let  it  go 
down-stream  like  a  dead  dog."  If  Thoreau  is  a 
Buddhist  he  is  a  vigorous  and  a  sprightly  Bud 
dhist.  "  The  intellect  is  a  cleaver ;  it  discerns 
and  rifts  its  way  into  the  secret  of  things,"  wrote 
Thoreau  in  "Walden."  There  is  a  thrust,  an  as 
siduous,  workmanlike  quality  in  Thoreau's  men 
tal  operations  which  marks  him  as  distinct  from 
his  fellows.  Thoreau  spoke  always  as  a  per 
son,  never  as  a  mere  metaphysician.  Coleridge's 
essay  "  On  Sensibility"  in  the  "Aids  to  Eeflec- 
tion"  amounts  almost  to  an  epitome  of  Tho 
reau's  thinking*;  but  to  no  more  than  an  epitome. 
Thoreau's  reaction  to  his  friends  and  to  society 
is  as  sharp  as  any  that  is  recorded.  No  other 
naturalist  has  been  so  malicious;  no  other  tran- 
scendentalist  has  been  so  fastidious.  He  draws 
his  personal  circle  very  distinctly,  to  make  sure 
that  it  is  seen.  He  is  very  positive;  a  college 
essay  begins,  "  The  order  of  things  should  be  re 
versed."  He  can  be  very  disturbing  as  well,  as 
Stevenson  sets  forth  in  a  clear  paragraph :  "  His 
system  of  personal  economics  ...  is  based  on  one 
or  two  ideas  which,  I  believe,  come  naturally  to  all 
thoughtful  youths,  and  are  only  pounded  out  of 
them  by  city  uncles.  Indeed,  something  essen- 


THE  SPECIFIC  69 

tially  youthful  distinguishes  all  Thoreau's  knock 
down  blows  at  current  opinion.  Like  the  posers 
of  a  child,  they  leave  the  orthodox  in  a  kind  of 
speechless  agony.  These  know  the  thing  is  non 
sense.  They  are  sure  there  must  be  an  answer,  yet 
somehow  cannot  find  it.  ...  He  attacks  the  subject 
in  a  new  dialect  where  there  are  no  catchwords 
ready  made  for  the  defender."  Even  after  the 
catchword  is  brought  forth  and  the  paradox  is  ex 
posed,  he  defeats  still  by  a  cool  twinkling  in  the 
eye  which  cannot  be  startled  away.  This  passage 
from  "  Life  Without  Principle  "  best  exemplifies 
what  Stevenson  was  describing :  "  A  strange  age 
of  the  world  this,  when  empires,  kingdoms,  and 
republics  come  a-begging  to  a  private  man's 
door,  and  utter  their  complaints  at  his  elbow !  I 
cannot  take  up  a  newspaper  but  I  find  that  some 
wretched  government  or  other,  hard  pushed  and 
on  its  last  legs,  is  interceding  with  me,  the  reader, 
to  vote  for  it,  —  more  importunate  than  an  Italian 
beggar."  When  his  expansion  is  hindered,  he 
strikes  back  very  decisively.  He  knew  his  ex 
pansion  was  good ;  said  so  with  a  flash  of  the 
eye ;  struck  fire  when  challenged. 

"For  pure,  nonsensical  abstractions  he  had 
no  taste,"  thought  Channing.  He  is  interesting 
to-day  only  in  those  respects  in  which  he  broke 
out  of  the  thick  mystic  cloud  which  enveloped 
New  England  —  broke  out  to  breathe  pure  air 


70  HENRY  DAVID   THOREAU 

with  George  Herbert  or  Homer  or  Persius  or 
Confucius  or  the  crab-apple  tree.  He  could  be 
+ 1  (concise  even  in  his  mysticism — if  that  is  not  a 
I  (paradox.  He  has  many  unfledged,  thick  pas 
sages  in  the  Journal,  but  they  are  not  the  best 
of  Thoreau,  and  need  not  be  kept.  It  is  vastly 
to  his  credit  that  he  selected  the  best  of  the 
Journal,  the  most  sensible,  the  most  intelligible, 
the  most  definite,  for  publication  in  "  Walden  " 
and  the  "  Week."  For  it  is  only  when  he  is 
definite,  when,  for  example,  he  is  telling  what  is 
silent  rather  than  preaching  about  Silence,  that 
he  is  valuable.  He  applied  what  others  preached, 
illustrated  what  others  asserted,  sought  to  make 
sphericity  lovely  in  the  eyes  of  all  men.  "  My 
thought  is  a  part  of  the  meaning  of  the  world, 
and  hence  I  use  a  part  of  the  world  as  a  symbol 
to  express  my  thought,"  he  wrote.1  He  swore, 
"  Anta3us-like,"  to  "  be  not  long  absent  from  the 
ground."  It  was  by  putting  sphericity  into  fig 
ures,  into  terms  of  human  economics,  in  "  Wal 
den,"  that  he  became  a  classic. 

Thoreau  is  a  specific  Emerson.  "  The  Service" 
is  "  Circles  "  measured  and  cooled  and  visual 
ized  —  even  brought  home  to  earth  in  "  the  ele 
phant's  rolling  gait "  and  the  "  huge  sphere 
drawn  along  the  streets."  The  lilt,  airiness, 
spontaneity  of  Emerson  are  sacrificed  in  Thoreau 
1  Journal,  iv,  410. 


THE  SPECIFIC  71 

for  a  more  deliberate  method ;  but  that  delibera 
tion  is  worth  something  in  itself.  Emerson  him 
self  expounds  its  virtues :  "  In  reading  Henry 
Thoreau's  journal  I  am  very  sensible  of  the  vigor 
of  his  constitution.  That  oaken  strength  which 
I  noted  whenever  he  walked,  or  worked  or  sur 
veyed  wood-lots,  the  same  unhesitating  hand  with 
which  a  field-laborer  accosts  a  piece  of  work 
which  I  should  shun  as  a  waste  of  strength, 
Henry  shows  in  his  literary  strength.  He  has 
muscle,  and  ventures  on  and  performs  feats 
which  I  am  forced  to  decline.  In  reading  him  I 
find  the  same  thoughts,  the  same  spirit  that  is 
in  me,  but  he  takes  a  step  beyond  and  illus 
trates  by  excellent  images  that  which  I  should 
have  conveyed  in  a  sleepy  generalization.  'T  is 
as  if  I  went  into  a  gymnasium  and  saw  youths 
leap  and  climb  and  swing  with  a  force  unap 
proachable,  though  their  feats  are  only  continu 
ations  of  my  initial  grapplings  and  jumps."  1 
Thoreau  is  not  satisfied  with  sleepy  generaliza 
tions,  but  is  passionate  after  what  seems  to  him 
reality.  He  never  lets  himself  forget  that  it  is 
genuine  experience  he  is  seeking.  "  It  is  not 
easy  to  write  in  a  journal  what  interests  us 
at  any  time,  because  to  write  it  is  not  what  in 
terests  us,"  he  wrote.  Emerson  had  said,  "  There 

1  Emerson's  Journal,  quoted  in  E.  W.  Emerson,  Emerson  in 
Concord  (1890),  p.  113. 


72  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

/is  no  pure  Transcend  entail  st ";  Thoreau  wished 
to  see  what  pure  transcendentalism  was,  and 
went  to  Walden.  Emerson  stands  and  guesses, 
Thoreau  goes  and  finds.  Thoreau  literally  put 
his  whole  life  into  his  books.  Emerson  wishes 
to  talk  mainly  about  tendencies  and  about  ex 
pansive  strivings,  as  in  "  Circles  "  ;  Thoreau 
wishes  to  "drive  life  into  a  corner"  and  report 
what  he  sees.  He  marked  off  a  real  circle  of 
j  individual  rights.  That  he  deceived  himself  is 
not  relevant  here. 

Thoreau  was  born  an  observer,  and  was  not 
ashamed  of  his  gift.  At  twenty  he  praises  Goethe 
in  the  Journal  because  "  he  is  generally  satisfied 
with  giving  an  exact  description  of  objects  as 
they  appear  to  him."  In  a  college  essay  he  com 
mended  the  "  appetite  for  visible  images  "  mani 
fested  by  Greek  and  Italian  poets,  and  thought 
the  Northern  poets  rather  inclined  to  a  "  fond 
ness  for  the  dark  and  mysterious,"  a  "  neglect  of 
the  material."  Thoreau's  "  steps  were  winged  with 
the  most  eager  expectation  "  ;  he  craved  the  sight 
and  feel  of  facts.  A  keen  and  single-minded 
critic,  he  could  see  far  into  the  more  ordinary 
human  motives.  His  observations  of  people  are 
not  profound,  perhaps  because  they  are  few ;  his 
metaphysical  steed  ran  too  fast,  in  the  main,  for 
him  to  dare  to  glance  aside  at  faces  in  the  world. 
But  he  did  observe  bodies  and  gaits  and  eccen- 


THE  SPECIFIC  73 

trie! ties  shrewdly  now  and  then,  as  in  "  Cape 
Cod,"  where  he  is  like  Dickens,  or  in  "  Walden," 
in  John  Field's  cottage.  He  was  extraordinarily 
sensitive,  like  Stevenson  himself,  to  the  subtler 
of  the  superficial  relations,  as  some  passages  can 
demonstrate :  — 

"  There  is  a  proper  and  only  right  way  to  en 
ter  a  city,  as  well  as  to  make  advances  to  a 
strange  person ;  neither  will  allow  of  the  least 
forwardness  nor  bustle.  A  sensitive  person  can 
hardly  elbow  his  way  boldly,  laughing  and  talk 
ing,  into  a  strange  town,  without  experiencing 
some  twinges  of  conscience,  as  when  he  has 
treated  a  stranger  with  too  much  familiarity."  1 

"  It  is  a  very  true  and  expressive  phrase, 
4  He  looked  daggers  at  me.'  ...  It  is  wonder 
ful  how  we  get  about  the  streets  without  being 
wounded  by  these  delicate  and  glancing  weapons, 
a  man  can  so  nimbly  whip  out  his  rapier,  or 
without  being  noticed  carry  it  unsheathed.  Yet 
after  all,  it  is  rare  that  one  gets  seriously  looked 
at."  2 

"With  him  [the  lock-keeper  at  Middlesex] 
we  had  a  just  and  equal  encounter  of  the  eyes, 
as  between  two  honest  men.  The  movements  of 
the  eyes  express  the  perpetual  and  unconscious 
courtesy  of  the  parties.  It  is  said  that  a  rogue 
does  not  look  you  in  the  face,  neither  does  an 
i  Journal,  I,  47.  2  Week. 


74  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

honest  man  look  at  you  as  if  he  had  his  reputa 
tion  to  establish.  I  have  seen  some  who  did  not 
know  when  to  turn  aside  their  eyes  in  meet 
ing  yours.  A  truly  confident  and  magnanimous 
spirit  is  wiser  than  to  contend  for  the  mastery  in 
such  encounters.  Serpents  alone  conquer  by  the 
steadiness  of  their  gaze.  My  friend  looks  me  in 
the  face  and  sees  me,  that  is  all."  l 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  hear  more  of  Thoreau's 
"  Uncle  Charles "  Dunbar.  A  half-dozen  para 
graphs  scattered  through  the  Journal  uncover  in 
Thoreau  a  gift  for  hitting  off  character  which  it 
seems  too  bad  was  never  improved. 

September,  1850  :  "Charles  grew  up  to  be  a 
remarkably  eccentric  man.  He  was  of  large  frame, 
athletic,  and  celebrated  for  his  feats  of  strength. 
His  lungs  were  proportionally  strong.  There  was 
a  man  who  heard  him  named  once,  and  asked  if 
it  was  the  same  Charles  Dunbar  whom  he  re 
membered  when  he  was  a  little  boy  walking  on 
the  coast  of  Maine.  A  man  came  down  to  the 
shore  and  hailed  a  vessel  that  was  sailing  by. 
He  should  never  forget  that  man's  name." 

April  3,1856 :  "  Uncle  Charles  used  to 'say  that 
he  had  n't  a  single  tooth  in  his  head.  The  fact  was 
they  were  all  double,  and  I  have  heard  that  he  lost 
about  all  of  them  by  the  time  he  was  twenty -one. 
Ever  since  I  knew  him  he  could  swallow  his  nose." 

1   Week. 


THE  SPECIFIC  75 

March  11,  1859:  "  E.  Hosmer  says  that  a 
man  told  him  that  he  had  seen  my  uncle  Charles 
take  a  twelve-foot  ladder,  set  it  up  straight,  and 
then  run  up  and  down  the  other  side,  kicking  it 
from  behind  him  as  he  went  down." 

January  15,  1853  :  "  Saw  near  L 's,  the 

12th,  a  shrike.  He  told  me  about  seeing  Uncle 
Charles  once,  come  to  Barrett's  mill  with  logs, 
leap  over  the  yoke  that  drew  them  and  back 
again.  It  amused  the  boys." 

January  1,  1853  :  "  After  talking  with  Uncle 
Charles  the  other  night  about  the  worthies  of 
this  country,  Webster  and  the  rest,  as  usual, 
considering  who  were  geniuses  and  who  were 
not,  I  showed  him  up  to  bed,  and  when  I  had 
got  into  bed  myself,  I  heard  his  chamber  door 
opened,  after  eleven  o'clock,  and  he  called  out, 
in  an  earnest,  stentorian  voice,  loud  enough  to 
wake  the  whole  house,  4  Henry !  was  John  Quincy 
Adams  a  genius?'  'No,  I  think  not,'  was  my 
reply.  '  Well,  I  did  n't  think  he  was,'  answered 
he." 

Thoreau's  genius  for  the  specific  is  to  be  seen 
working  on  the  largest  scale  in  his  assembling 
of  isolated  passages  from  various  years  of  the 
Journal  into  such  organic  units  as  "  Walden," 
the  "  Week,"  and  "  Cape  Cod."  Few  readers 
realize  that  "Walden,"  for  instance,  is  made  up 
out  of  as  many  as  sixteen  years  of  the  Journal 


76  HENRY  DAVID   THOREAU 

(1838-54).  It  is  scarcely  too  generous  to  credit 
him  here  with  some  measure  of  creative  genius 
—  of  which  it  has  been  asserted  he  has  "  not  a 
spark." J  "  He  was  probably  reminded  by  his 
delicate  critical  perception  that  the  true  business 
of  literature  is  with  narrative,"  says  Stevenson, 
whose  hobby  can  be  forgiven  for  the  once. 
"Truth,  even  in  literature,  must  be  clothed  with 
flesh  and  blood,  or  it  cannot  tell  its  whole  story 
to  the  reader."  Thoreau  does  have  unquestion 
ably  the  story-teller's  knack.  He  thought  .ZEsop 
would  be  intolerable  if  his  morals  only  were 
printed.2  He  understood  that  expectation  is  the 
secret  of  the  charm  in  romance,  and  has  not  a 
few  stealthy,  intense  fragments  of  narrative  in 

1  This  genius  can  best  be  appreciated  by  one  who  consults 
the  edition  of  Walden  printed  by  the  Bibliophile  Society  of 
Boston,  wherein  Thoreau's  original  arrangement  of  the  Jour 
nal  pages  out  of  which  the  present  Walden  was  assembled  is 
followed  faithfully  by  the  editors,  Mr.  Harper  and  Mr.  San- 
born.     The   differences   between    the    earlier,    less    shapely 
"book"  and  the  classic  of  1854  are  many  and  great.  It  is 
quite   improbable   that   any   other  than   Thoreau   made   the 
changes.    The    publisher  (who  Mr.  Harper  intimates  was  re 
sponsible  for  the  improvement)  or  any  one  could  have  removed 
twelve  thousand  words  easily  enough  ;  but  it  is  scarcely  think 
able  that  Thoreau,  who  was  always  jealous  of  his  text,  would 
have  entrusted  the  task  of  abridgment  and  unification  to  an 
other  ;  it  is  almost  certain  that  no  other  than  his  own  skillful 
hand   was   the   manipulator;  the   hand,   whose  ever  it  was, 
touched  so  many  parts  of  the  manuscript  that  "  it  was  neces 
sary  to  make  changes  in  nearly  three  hundred  pages." 

2  Journal,  in,  240. 


THE  SPECIFIC  77 

his  Journal.  He  understood,  too,  that  people 
read  pictures,  that  the  writer  must  seem  to  speak 
out  of  somewhere,  must  seem  to  live  perpetually 
in  such  an  atmosphere  or  even  in  such  a  locality 
as  only  his  art  knows  how  to  select  and  arrest 
from  the  perplexing  disorder  of  passing  life.  He 
knew  how  to  dress  himself  in  a  cloak  of  wistful 
expectancy  ;  and  he  knew  how  to  wrap  the  locali 
ties  he  was  describing  in  "  atmospheres,"  knew 
how  to  make  the  spirit  of  the  ponds  and  the 
clearings  permeate  "  Walden,"  the  spirit  of  the 
lazy  river  the  "  Week,"  the  spirit  of  the  omi 
nous  sea  "  Cape  Cod,"  and  the  spirit  of  the  tall 
forest  the  "  Maine  Woods."  He  believed  in  the 
milieu. 

His  talent  for  organization  is  even  more  than 
this ;  it  contains  elements  of  the  dramatic.  The 
paragraphs  on  "  Uncle  Charles  "  show  an  apti 
tude  for  "  humours,"  and  chapters  in  "  Cape  Cod  " 
have  been  likened  to  Dickens.  Thoreau  confesses 
to  that  temperamental  dualism  which  creators 
of  "  humours  "  are  likely  to  experience,  and  which 
forced  Daudet  almost  against  his  will,  as  he 
stood  by  his  mother's  coffin,  to  set  to  grouping 
the  surroundings  (including  himself)  into  a  tab 
leau  suitable  to  fiction.  "I  ...  am  sensible  of  a 
certain  doubleness  by  which  I  can  stand  as  remote 
from  myself  as  from  another,"  Thoreau  wrote. 1 
1  Journal,  rv,  291. 


78  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

He  could  group  his  impressions  and  experiences, 
and  frame  his  picture  with  facts,  like  a  play 
wright  —  or  an  encadreur.  He  had  a  predilection 
for  some  kind  of  unity;  an  island  pleased  his 
imagination  because  it  was  "  integral "  and  u  con 
tinent."  The  vicinity  of  Walden  Pond,  the  beach 
at  Cape  Cod,  the  seven-day  stretch  of  the  Mer- 
rimac  and  Concord  Rivers,  are  geographical  or 
at  least  psychological  units.  The  i^adejLis_never 
without  a  feeliiig^Lsatisfaction,  as  of  being  cer 
tain  of  his  location  and  his  directions.  The  bean- 
field,  the  villageT^he  ponds,  th~e~  woods  are  as 
important  in  "  Walden "  perhaps  as  the  ideas 
there  upon  economy  or  upon  Homer.  The  railroad 
and  the  train  crew  are  most  skillfully  employed 
as  points  of  reference  —  as  foils  for  ideas  —  as 
guaranties  of  reality.  And  when  Thoreau  says 
he  lay  for  a  long  time  at  the  edge  of  a  hole  in 
the  ice  and  mooned  at  the  uneven  floor  of  the 
pond,  his  readers  see  him  in  his  proper  place 
upon  a  stage ;  and  they  never  wish  themselves 
out  of  the  audience  and  looking  over  his  shoulder. 
This  illusion  of  place  is  most  admirably  achieved 
in  "  Walden  "  of  all  Thoreau's  works ;  Thoreau 
is  everywhere  effective  in  proportion  as  he  deals 
in  this  illusion.  It  would  be  unjust  to  him  to  say 
that  it  is  accidental  in  "  Walden."  He  was  as 
conscious  of  a  dramatic  mission  there  as  he  was 
of  a  spiritual  mission  in  "  The  Service." 


THE  SPECIFIC  79 

Thoreau's  genius  for  the  specific  was  of  the 
first  importance  in  his  writing,  where  he  strove 
to  precipitate  the  vapor  of  a  cloudy  philosophy 
in  fixed,  crystal  drops,  and  where  his  most  en 
during  excellence  surely  lies ;  it  is  of  the  first 
importance  now  to  any  one  who  would  study  his 
theory  and  practice  of  composition. 

It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  for  Thoreau, 
even  in  the  most  literal  sense,  writing  meant  liv 
ing.  "  I  think  Thoreau  had  always  looked  forward 
to  authorship  as  his  work  in  life,"  said  Emerson. 
Channing  thought  that  "  no  matter  where  he 
might  have  lived,  or  in  what  circumstance,  he 
would  have  been  a  writer ;  he  was  made  for  this 
by  all  his  tendencies  of  mind  and  temperament"; 
and  records  that  "  it  was  a  saying  of  his  that  he 
had  lived  and  written  as  if  to  live  forty  years 
longer ;  his  work  was  laid  out  for  a  long  life."  l 

Such  testimony  establishes  his  passion.  More 
testimony  establishes  his  good  faith.  If  he  had  a 
passion  for  writing,  and  so  for  living,  he  had  also 
a  passion  for  writing  perfectly  and  so  for  living 
completely.  He  wrote  every  day  in  his  Journal 
for  training;  he  composed  prose  while  he  walked ; 
and  always  he  devoted  his  powers  to  the  written 
page,  refusing  to  strive  for  any  unusual  effects 

1  Thoreau  left,  among1  other  literary  effects,  eleven  manu 
script  volumes,  or  about  three  thousand  pages,  filled  labori 
ously  with  notes  on  the  Indians,  of  whom  it  is  known  he  intended 
to  write  an  elaborate  study. 


80  HENRY  DAVID  THOEEAU 

in  his  lecturing.  He  understood  that  "  nothing 
goes  by  luck  in  composition,"  and  took  to  heart 
Carlyle's  condemnation  of  Novalis  for  not  "trou 
bling  to  express  his  truth  with  any  laborious 
accuracy  "  for  "  want  of  rapid  energy  .  .  .  and 
.  .  .  the  emphasis  and  resolute  force  of  a  man." 
He  hated  "palaver"  in  style,  and  said  he  did 
manual  labor  in  order  to  outgrow  it.  "  It  is 
vain  to  try  to  write  unless  you  feel  strong  in  the 
knees,"  said  Thoreau. 

Thoreau  subscribed  to  conciseness  and  indi 
viduality  in  his  writing  as  elsewhere.  In  1851 
he  was  reminding  himself  by  a  footnote  in  the 
Journal,  — 

"  My  faults  are :  — 

Paradoxes,  —  saying  just    the   opposite,  —  a 

style  which  may  be  imitated. 
Ingenious. 
Using  current  phrases  and  maxims,  when  I 

should  speak  for  myself. 
Want  of  conciseness." 

He  envied  the  Greeks  because  they  could  "  ex 
press  themselves  with  more  facility  than  we  in 
distinct  and  lively  images."  He  hated  "  wooden 
and  lifeless "  words,  with  "  paralysis  in  their 
tails,"  as  he  hated  gossip.  He  was  a  good  work 
man,  filing  rather  more  finely  than  Emerson  took 
the  trouble  to  file.  "  Every  sentence  is  the  result 


THE  SPECIFIC  81 

of  a  long  probation,"  he  said,  and  "  should  read 
as  if  its  author,  had  he  held  a  plough  instead 
of  a  pen,  could  have  drawn  a  furrow  deep  and 
straight  to  the  end."  "  The  prose  writer  has 
conquered  like  a  Roman,  and  settled  colonies," 
it  seemed  to  him.  He  omitted  no  practicable 
measures  for  perfecting  his  equipment.  "  Henry 
Thoreau  says  he  values  only  the  man  who  goes 
directly  to  his  needs ;  who,  wanting  wood,  goes 
to  the  woods  and  brings  it  home,"  said  Chan- 
ning.  He  disciplined  himself  by  studying  Her 
bert  and  Quarles,  and  by  translating  two  dramas 
of  ^Eschylus  and  selections  from  Homer,  Anac- 
reon,  and  Pindar ;  he  aped  the  styles  of  a  dozen 
prose-masters.  The  most  remarkable  product  of 
his  mimicry  is  the  last  paragraph  of  the  chapter 
called  "  The  Pond  in  Winter  "  in  «  Walden," 
which  moves  with  many  a  token  of  the  gait  of 
Sir  Thomas  Browne.  All  in  all,  Thoreau,  if  not 
radiant,  writes  so  satisfactorily  that  the  critic  is 
tempted  (and  his  earlier  critics  did  not  in  fact  resist 
the  temptation)  to  do  nothing  but  fill  his  space 
with  quotations ;  for  Thoreau  can  take  the  matter 
in  hand  away  from  the  bungling  expositor  and 
dispatch  it  in  a  phrase  or  paragraph  that  calls 
for  no  amendment. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  decide  to  what  school  of 
literary  theorists  Thoreau  belongs.  He .  was  a 
nineteenth-century  euphuist  of  the  stamp  of  Flau- 


82  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

bert,  Stevenson,  and  Pater  ;  he  travailed  to  catch 
consciousness  itself  in  the  trap  of  the  specific ; 
he  wished  to  express  "  himself."  "  Men  are  con 
stantly  dinging  in  my  ears  their  fair  theories  and 
plausible  solutions  of  the  universe,  but  ever  there 
is  no  help,  and  I  return  again  to  my  shoreless, 
islandless  ocean,  and  fathom  unceasingly  for  a 
bottom  that  will  hold  an  anchor."  l  He  believed 
that  if  he  could  come  squarely  upon  his  self,  and 
could  describe  that  self  exactly,  he  would  be  an 
chored  for  once  and  all.  His  whole  literary  quest 
was  a  quest  for  a  charm  by  which  he  could  trans 
fer  the  facts  of  consciousness  —  to  him  as  to  many 
men  of  letters  in  the  nineteenth  century  the  only 
reality  —  to  the  printed  page.  He  watched  his 
"moods  ...  as  narrowly  as  a  cat  does  a  mouse," 
he  said.  "  He  had  as  touchstone  for  authors  their 
degree  of  ability  to  deal  with  supersensual  facts 
and  feeling  with  scientific  precision  and  dignity," 
an  acquaintance  wrote.  For  him  "thought" 
meant  "  impression,"  and  "  impression  "  meant 
"  reality."  He  considered  that  he  should  have 
come  nearest  reality  when  he  had  "  kinked  and 
knotted  "  his  impressions  into  "  something  hard 
and  significant,  which  you  could  swallow  like  a 
diamond,  without  digesting." 2  He  wished  his 
"  life  "  to  go  into  his  books,  and  is  alarmed  in 
1840  3  when  he  considers  "  how  little  I  am  actu- 
1  Journal,  i,  54.  2  Ibid.,  11,  419.  8  Ibid.,  1, 143. 


THE  SPECIFIC  83 

ally  concerned  about  the  things  I  write  in  my 
journal."  He  wished  his  books  to  present  an  ab 
solutely  new  front  of  life,  a  new  kind  of  reality 

—  his  own  life,  and  his  own  "  reality."  "  If  you 
can  write  what  you  will  never  read,  you  have 
done  rare  things,"  he  said  in  the  "  Week."  He 
was  zealous  in  the  cause  of  expressing  particular 

—  and  so  for  him  the  only  genuine  —  impres 
sions  ;  he  has  much  to  say  to  that  man  who  can 
see  no  difference  between  one  green  field  and  an 
other.  He  comes  nearest,  perhaps,  to  convincing 
his  readers  of  what  they  should  be  steadfastly 
reluctant  to  believe  —  that  there  is  anything  new 
under  the  sun  —  in  such  a  passage  as  this  im 
peccable  one  from  the  "  Maine  Woods  "  :  "  Once, 
when  Joe  [the  Indian  guide]  had  called  again, 
and  we  were  listening  for  moose,  we  heard,  come 
faintly  echoing,  or  creeping  from  afar,  through 
the  moss-clad  aisles,  a  dull,  dry,  rushing  sound 
with  a  solid  core  to  it,  yet  as  if  half-smothered 
under  the  grasp  of  the  luxuriant  and  fungus-like 
forest,  like  the  shutting  of  a  door  in  some  dis 
tant  entry  of  the  damp  and  shaggy  wilderness. 
If  we  had  not  been  there,  no  mortal  had  heard 
it.  When  we  asked  Joe  in  a  whisper  what  it  was, 
he  answered,  '  Tree  fall.'  " 

Thoreau  is  definitely  related  to  the  nineteenth- 
century  prose  "  school  of  the  particular,"  perhaps 
in  the  capacity  of  pioneer,  through  his  influence 


84  HENRY  DAVID   THOREAU 

upon  Stevenson.  There  is  no  question  that  Ste 
venson  took  much  from  Thoreau.  Both  began  by 
imitating.  The  very  first  sentence  of  "  The  Serv 
ice  "  would  have  done,  as  far  as  tone  is  con 
cerned,  for  the  first  sentence  of  "  JEs  Triplex." 
The  "  Week  "  reminds  one  of  the  "  Inland  Voy 
age  "  in  the  first  paragraph  and  on  almost  every 
page  thereafter.  The  trick  of  defining  one  im 
pression  by  bringing  another  impression  smartly 
alongside  —  "it  is  as  if  the  beasts  spoke"1  — 
Stevenson  could  have  learned  in  the  pages  of  Tho 
reau.  Had  Stevenson  not  been  fascinated  by  the 
man  himself,  his  judgments  upon  him  could  not 
have  been  as  trenchant  and  subtle  as  they  were ; 
he  told  some  one  in  an  enthusiastic  moment  that 
he  supposed  he  had  never  written  ten  words  after 
he  had  once  read  Thoreau  which  would  not  re 
call  him. 

Thoreau,  isolated  in  America,  his  wits  stray 
ing  through  the  endless  and  utterly  formless 
reaches  of  a  transcendental  Journal,  did  not  end 
his  literary  career  as  happily  as  Flaubert  and 
Stevenson,  writers  of  finished  stories,  and  Pater, 
writer  of  finished  essays,  ended  theirs.  Fatally 
committed  to  sphericity,  always,  unfortunately, 
conscious  of  "eternity  and  space  gambolling 
familiarly  through  my  depths,"  2  he  had  not  the 
means  of  improving  and  disciplining  his  native 
1  Thoreau  on  Whitman.  2  Journal,  i,  54. 


THE  SPECIFIC  85 

genius  for  the  specific  which  Pater  had  in  his 
intellectual  ideal  of  beauty  and  his  better  under 
standing*  of  the  Greek  feeling  that  the  half  yields 
greater  satisfaction  to  the  spirit  than  the  whole. 
So  that  while  the  Greeks  could  "  prune  his  ora 
tions  and  point  his  pen,"  and  do  somewhat  to 
give  him  "bottom,  endurance,  wind,"1  they 
never  gave  Thoreau  to  understand  that  scrutiny 
of  consciousness  itself  needs  scrutiny.  By  1850 
he  had  forgotten  to  translate  from  the  Greek, 
had  forgotten  to  discipline  his  Journal  prose  by 
exercising  in  verse,  and  had  fallen  into  the 
grasp  of  as  relentless  a  demon  of  romantic  com 
position  as  is  anywhere  to  be  seen  in  literature. 
"  His  literary  art,"  says  Burroughs,  "  was  to  let 
fly  with  a  kind  of  quick  inspiration."  He  tells 
himself  in  the  Journal  that  the  theme  seeks  him, 
not  he  it ;  that  he  "  fears  no  intemperance,"  but 
is  prepared  to  "  drain  the  cup  of  inspiration  to 
its  last  dregs  "  ;  that  he  is  ambitious  to  "  take  as 
many  bounds  in  a  day  as  possible."  He  did  take 
some  very  extravagant  bounds  in  his  Journal, 
believing  implicitly  that  his  natural  mind  was 
inexhaustible,  welcoming  any  impression  that 
was  sharp  and  vivid,  "  improving  every  op 
portunity  to  express  himself  as  if  it  were  the 
last,"  making  the  most  of  every  fancy  lest  if  re 
jected  it  prove  to  have  been  important,  piling 

1  Emerson,  English  Traits. 


86  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

up  examples  and  talking  all  around  a  subject  in 
hopes  of  getting  to  it  "naturally."  In  proportion 
as  he  grew  desperate  in  his  pursuit  of  the  one 
germ  at  last  which  when  swallowed  would  expand 
him  indefinitely,  he  grew  less  effectual  in  his  self- 
expression.  The  style  and  the  self,  whenever 
they  dissipated,  dissipated  together.  Perhaps  a 
commission  from  the  demon  to  labor  for  years 
on  a  work  like  "  Marius  the  Epicurean "  was 
what  he,  the  writer,  stood  in  need  of,  he  the 
diamond  disintegrating  in  his  brave  vacuum  on 
the  rock-bound  coast  of  New  England. 


HEADING 

"  WE  confess,"  wrote  Lowell  in  his  first  essay 
on  Thoreau,  "  that  there  is  a  certain  charm  for 
us  even  about  a  fool  who  has  read  myriads  of 
books.  There  is  an  undefinable  atmosphere 
around  him  as  of  distant  lands  around  a  great 
traveller,  and  of  distant  years  around  very  old 
men."  Lowell,  who  is  far  from  insinuating  that 
Thoreau  is  a  fool,  here  puts  the  student  on  the 
track  of  what  is  soundest  and  most  engaging  in 
Thoreau  —  his  love  and  use  of  books.  His  genius 
for  the  specific  did  not  fail  him  here  but  made 
of  him  (not  to  speak  of  the  writer  in  him  which 
it  distinguished)  a  reader  whose  every  remark 
rings  true  and  inviting. 

Thoreau  is  a  literary  epicure  of  a  superior 
order.  He  has  neither  the  dissolute  fastidiousness 
of  a  Sylvestre  Bonnard  nor  the  all-devouring 
hunger  of  an  Emerson.  He  does  not  go  mad  over 
a  quoted  delicacy  or  a  rare  title,  and  he  does  not 
read  ubiquitously  for  the  sensation  of  inspiration. 
But  he  has  that "  undefinable  atmosphere  around 
him  "  which  lies  around  any  man  who  seems  to 
have  all  the  time  in  the  world  to  do  what  he 
pleases  —  in  Thoreau's  case  the  man  who  has  all 


88  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

the  time  in  the  world  to  read  and  reread  his  favorite 
books.  And  since  it  is  in  his  reading  that  Thoreau 
has  most  control  of  himself,  his  example  is 
not  bad.  It  is  the  chapter  on  "Reading"  in 
"  Walden,"  with  its  reminder  that  the  language 
of  the  classics  is  dead  only  to  the  degenerate, 
and  its  assertion  that  "books  must  be  read  as 
deliberately  and  reservedly  as  they  were  written  " 
which  marks  him  as  a  scholar  and  which  distin 
guishes  him  from  some  of  his  less  self-contained 
contemporaries. 

Perhaps  his  distinction  as  a  writer  and  as  a 
personality  is  to  be  ascribed  to  the  fact  that  he 
studied  only  what  was  best  in  college,  that  he 
settled  down  to  the  luxurious,  wonderful  task  of 
reading  the  older  English  poets  through  and  did 
not  always  bother  to  gulp  down  the  last  piece  of 
mystic  bait  from  Germany  or  England.  The  charm 
and  even  value  of  his  work  may  prove  eventually 
to  lie  where  the  charm  of  his  favorite  Persius  lies, 
in  its  bookishness.  Thoreau  knew  pretty  definitely 
from  the  beginning  what  he  wanted  to  read,  and 
he  was  able  to  keep  himself  within  the  wholesome 
limits  which  his  instinct  and  conscience  set.  He 
has  not  the  transcendental  pride  in  catholicity  of 
reading  but  chooses  his  fields  like  a  self-reliant 
scholar.1 

1  Six  fly-leaves  in  the  back  of  Thoreau's  copy  of  the  Trav 
eller's  Guide  through  the  United  States  (1838),  a  little  book  car- 


READING  89 

There  is  a  rare  workmanlike  air  about  Tho- 
reau's    handling   of   books.    When    he   reports 

ried  by  him  on  one  or  more  of  his  excursions,  and  now  in  the 
possession  of  Mr.  George  S.  Hellman,  are  covered  with  bhe  fol 
lowing  pencil-notes,  written  in  apparent  hurry  and  without 
comment :  — 

14th    Caatine  to  Belfast  by  packet  Capt.  Skinner 

15th    Belfast  to  Bath 

16th    Wednesday,  to  Portland 

17  —  to  Boston  —  Concord 


Campbell's  Poems 
Sally  Russell's  Letters 
La  Nouvelle  Heloise. 
Akenside 
Emile 


Chefs  D'(Euvre  de  Corneille. 


Johnson's  Lives  of  the  Poets. 


Goethe 


Lettres  Choisies  de  Mme  De  Sevigiie  et  De  Main  tenon. 
Am.  Lib.  Use.  Knowl. 
Universal  History 

Mechanics,  Pneumatics,  etc. 
Pilgrim's  Progress 

(Euvres  Completes  De  Platon    12  vols. 
Sir  Th.  Browne's  Works    4  vols. 


Horace  Walpole    Private  Correspondence 
Studies  of  Nature 


Leighton 

Johnson 

Donne's  Devotions. 

Seneca's  Morals 

Fielding's  Proverbs 

Philip  Van  Artevelde 

Lardner's  Cyc.  Astronomy  &  Study  of  Nat.  PhiL 

Montaigne 

Mrs.  Somerville 
Wottoa 


90  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

his  reading  it  is  from  isolation,  and  is  as  if  a 
cabinet-maker  stepped  out  of  his  shop  to  ex 
hibit  a  pet  piece  of  his  own  making.  When 
one  hears  that  he  read  Chalmers's  "  Poets " 
through,  one  sees  him  sitting  alone  in  rare  quiet, 
fondling  his  book  much  as  a  carpenter  squints 
along  a  smoothed  board,  or  a  sailor  trims  his 
yarn  on  a  pile  of  canvas.  He  read  as  systemati 
cally  as  his  means  allowed  in  such  fields  as  the 
older  English  poets,  the  seventeenth  century,  the 
classics,  and  the  Oriental  Scriptures,  always 
in  this  workmanlike  fashion.  Intensely  serious, 

De  Stael's  Germany 

Ben  Johnson 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher 

Moliere 

St.  Augustine 

Malte  Brun 

Anecdotes  of  Eminent  Persons 

Lib.  Use.  Knowl.  Some  volfl. 


Gibbon 
Hume 
Lord  Bacon 
Percy  Anecdotes 
Burton 


Bakewell's  Geology 

Burke 

Clarendon 

Blackwood 

Dr.  Byrom's  Misc.  Poems.  2  v. 

Wither's  Britain's  Remembrancer 

Norris 

Henry  More 

Quarles 

Crashaw's  Steps  to  the  Temple 

Wilmott'a  Lives  of  the  Sacred  Poets. 


READING  91 

sedulously  intent  on  self-improvement,  he  se 
lected  with  precision  and  read  for  strength.  He 
had  a  quick  and  true  eye  for  excellence.  "  He 
would  pass  by  many  delicate  rhythms,"  says 
Emerson,  "  but  he  would  detect  every  live  stanza 
or  line  in  a  volume,  and  knew  very  well  where 
to  find  an  equal  poetic  charm  hi  prose."  One 
would  like  to  have  seen  his  collection  of  "ex 
tracts  from  the  noblest  poetry." 

An  understanding  of  this  bent  for  refining  the 
best  from  books — crystal  sentences,  precious 
lines,  and  fine  flavors  —  will  take  the  student 
farthest  along  the  way  of  his  reading,  and  do 
most  to  explain  why  he  tarried  here,  why  he 
never  left  there,  why  he  passed  this  field  by,  why 
he  set  up  an  idol  in  that  place. 

An  understanding  of  his  philosophical  position, 
which  was  almost  identical  with  Emerson's,  will 
not  be  half  so  useful  a  tool  as  this  very  keen  one  of 
his  literary  tact.  Thus  a  very  satisfactory  founda 
tion  for  the  whole  of  his  thinking  might  be  built 
out  of  such  passages  in  the  four  volumes  of  the 
"  Dial "  as  this  (from  an  essay  in  the  second  num 
ber,  "The  Art  of  Life  — The  Scholar's  Call 
ing  "  *):  "  Life  is  an  art.  When  we  consider  what 
life  may  be  to  all,  and  what  it  is  to  most,  we  shall 
see  how  little  this  art  is  yet  understood.  .  .  .  The 
work  of  life,  so  far  as  the  individual  is  concerned, 
i  Dial,  i,  175. 


92  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

and  that  to  which  the  scholar  is  particularly  called, 
is  self-culture,  —  the  perfect  unfolding  of  our  in 
dividual  nature.  .  .  .  The  business  of  self-culture 
admits  of  no  compromise.  Either  it  must  be  made 
a  distinct  aim,  or  wholly  abandoned.  '  I  respect 
the  man,'  says  Goethe,  'who  knows  distinctly 
what  he  wishes.'  ...  In  all  things  the  times  are 
marked  by  a  want  of  steady  aim  and  patient  in 
dustry.  .  .  .  The  young  man  launches  into  life 
with  no  definite  course  in  view.  .  .  .  The  sure  sat 
isfaction  which  accompanies  the  consciousness  of 
progress  in  the  true  direction  towards  the  stature 
of  a  perfect  man.  Let  him  who  would  build  .  .  . 
consider  well  the  cost.  .  .  .  Much  ...  he  will  have 
to  renounce.  .  .  .  No  emoluments  must  seduce  him 
from  the  rigor  of  his  devotion.  No  engagements 
beyond  the  merest  necessities  of  life  must  inter 
fere  with  his  pursuit.  A  meagre  economy  must  be 
his  income.  .  .  .  The  rusty  coat  must  be  his  badge. 
Obscurity  must  be  his  distinction.  .  .  .  The 
business  of  society  is  not .  .  .  the  highest  culture, 
but  the  greatest  comfort.  .  .  .  On  all  hands  man's 
existence  is  converted  into  a  preparation  for  ex 
istence.  We  do  not  properly  live  in  these  days. 
.  .  .  We  cannot  get  to  ourselves.  .  .  .  Conscious 
ness  stops  half  way.  O !  for  some  moral  Alaric, 
who  should  sweep  away  all  that  has  been  in  this 
kind.  .  .  .  The  highest  life  is  the  life  of  the  mind, 
the  enjoyment  of  thought.  Between  this  life  and 


READING  93 

any  point  of  outward  existence,  there  is  never  but 
one  step,  and  that  step  is  an  act  of  the  will. 
The  business  of  self-culture  is  to  live  now,  to  live 
in  the  present,  to  live  in  the  highest.  .  .  .  This 
habit  of  living  for  effect  [is]  utterly  incom 
patible  with  wholesome  effort  and  an  earnest 
mind.  No  heroic  character,  no  depth  of  feeling, 
or  clearness  of  insight  can  ever  come  of  such  a 
life.  All  that  is  best  in  human  attainments 
springs  from  retirement.  ...  In  retirement  we 
first  become  acquainted  with  ourselves,  our 
means,  and  ends.  Whatever  selfishness  there 
may  seem  to  be  in  such  a  discipline  as  this, 
exists  only  in  appearance.  ...  In  self -culture  lies 
the  ground  and  condition  of  all  culture.  .  .  . 
The  silent  influence  of  example  ...  is  the  true 
reformer.  .  .  .  Society  are  more  benefited  by  one 
sincere  life,  by  seeing  how  one  man  has  helped 
himself,  than  by  all  the  projects  that  human  policy 
has  devised  for  their  salvation.  .  .  .  All  truth 
must  be  lived  before  it  can  be  adequately  known 
or  taught.  .  .  .  The  scholar  has  his  function  .  .  . 
he  must  be  a  radical  in  speculation,  an  ascetic  in 
devotion,  a  cynic  in  independence,  an  anchorite  in 
his  habits,  a  perfectionist  in  discipline.  Secluded 
from  without,  and  nourished  from  within.  .  .  . 
It  is  to  such  men  that  we  must  look  for  the  long 
expected  literature  of  this  nation.  .  .  .  We  have 
no  practical  poets,  —  no  epic  lives."  Philosophi- 


Thoreau  was  most  drawn  to  and  was  most  dur- 


94  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

cally  considered,  Thoreau  has  little  more  to  say 
than  the  voluble  writers  of  the  "  Dial "  had  to  say. 
But  he  is  more  than  a  philosopher  ;  and  why  the 
artist  in  him  could  step,  half-Phosnix  and  half- 
Chanticleer,  clear-voiced  and  clean-limbed  out  of 
the  swaddling-clothes  of  the  Orphic  "Dial," 
only  his  genius  can  explain. 

I/ 

ably  nourished  by  three  literary  springs — the 
Oriental  Scriptures,  the  classics,  and  the  older 
English  poets.  Outside  of  these  (if  the  English 
Bible,  and  Emerson,  whose  books  he  "rarely 
looked  at," l  and  Carlyle,  whose  style  he  admired 
but  could  not  possibly  imitate,  are  excepted)  it  is 
seldom  necessary  to  go  for  literary  influences.  He 
disliked  German  metaphysics  and  the  involved 
German  language.  Indeed,  it  is  impossible  for  one 

S who  appreciates  the  quiet,  clear,  spare,  hard  Gaul 

and  Scot  in  him  to  link  him  for  any  reason  with 
the  German  metaphysicians;  just  as  it  is  impossi 
ble  not  to  link  with  them  Coleridge  when  he  was 
steeped  in  opium  and  thick  mystic  eloquence,  or 
Carlyle  when  he  played  the  role  of  coffee-drinking, 
sulphurous  mystic,  hounded  by  his  own  energy. 
"  He  had  no  favorite  among  the  French  or  Ger 
mans,"  it  was  said.  One  must  stick  to  the  solitary 
"heroic  writers  of  antiquity,"  and  to  "those 
books  which  circulate  round  the  world,  whose 
1  Journal,  in,  134. 


READING  95 

sentences  were  first  written  on  bark,  and  are  now 
merely  copied  from  time  to  time  onto  linen  paper," 
for  "  sources  "  of  Thoreau. 

"  We  read  the  Orientals,  but  remain  Occi 
dental.  The  fewest  men  receive  anything  from 
their  studies,"  said  Emerson.  Thoreau  remained 
as  Occidental  as  any  man  could  be ;  he  took  from 
his  Oriental  reading  merely  what  he  was  pleased  to 
clip  away ;  and  it  was  always  he,  Thoreau,  who 
took  it.  So  that  while  he  "  had  the  best  library 
of  Oriental  books  in  the  country,"  and  was  as  de 
lighted  over  Cholmondeley 's  gift  as  he  might  have 
been  at  "  the  birth  of  a  child,"  the  total  influence 
of  Oriental  philosophy  upon  Thoreau  was  neither 
broad  nor  profound.  He  neither  embraced  it 
lightly  as  a  cloistral  dream,  nor  sounded  it  stu 
diously  for  its  deepest  meaning.  He  cannot  be  said 
to  have  understood  the  true  significance  of  the 
Oriental  position,  with  its  stern  dualism,  its  diffi 
cult  discipline  (which  in  the  "  Week  "  he  called 
"  moral  drudgery  "),  its  pessimism  and  its  resig 
nation.  He,  like  Emerson  and  the  other  tran- 
scendentalists,  was  content  to  declare  jauntily  that 
"  the  Buddhist  is  a  transcendentalist,"  or  to  ape 
the  Zoroastrian  hilltop  worship  on  some  Concord 
eminence,  and  do  little  more. 

Thoreau  took  figures  and  sentences,  not  ideas, 
from  his  Oriental  reading.  It  was  the  sentences 
that  stayed  on  his  mind,  and  which  he  says  he 


96  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

annoyed  the  neighbors  with  repeating.  * '  One  wise 
sentence  is  worth  the  State  of  Massachusetts 
many  times  over,"  was  his  judgment.  If  Emer 
son  intellectualized  the  Oriental  Scriptures,  Tho- 
reau  used  whatever  sayings  in  them  could  crisply 
advise  him  what  to  do  or  neatly  and  with  an  air  of 
finality  justify  what  he  did.  There  is  something 
youthful  and  delightful  about  the  liberties  this 
crisp,  deft  man  takes  with  the  heavy-tongued 
Orientals.  It  is  the  liberty  which  a  curious  and 
earnest  youth,  ambitious  to  know  old  and  great 
things,  disliking  the  "  shocking  and  passionate,'* 
perhaps  deceived  by  vague  mystery  and  high  talk 
but  craving  confidence  and  bottom,  takes  with 
any  wisdom  that  is  ripe  and  of  long  standing. 

One  thing  more  important  than  sentences  Tho- 
reau  took  from  the  Orientals;  and  that  was  no 
such  thing  as  the  consciousness  of  standing  "  on 
the  meeting  of  two  eternities,  the  past  and  future, 
which  is  precisely  the  present  moment,"  but  some 
thing  more  sincere  and  vital.  Thoreau  is  prob 
ably  most  interesting  for  his  attitude  on  practi 
cal  questions  concerning  the  personal  relations. 
Thoreau's  native  hatred  of  philanthropy  must  have 
been  materially  reinforced  by  contact  with  what 
Orientalists  to-day  hold  up  to  the  humanitarian 
West  as  the  "  true  spirit  of  charity,"  the  Orien 
tal  doctrine  of  cold  benevolence  and  separation 
in  friendship.  He  must  have  relished  this  sen- 


READING  97 

tence  which  he  edited  for  the  "  Dial "  in  1843  :l 
"  Be  silent,  for  I  swear  by  Allah,  it  were  equal 
to  the  torments  of  hell  to  enter  into  Paradise 
through  the  interest  of  a  neighbor." 

Thoreau  was  somewhat  better  fitted  to  under 
stand  and  appropriate  the  Greek  spirit  than  he 
was  the  Oriental  spirit.  Brought  up  among  per 
sons  who  knew  the  value  of  Greek,  and  writing 
in  a  company  (Parker,  Miss  Fuller,  Alcott) 
which  was  extraordinarily  proficient  in  the  Greek 
language,  Thoreau  could  not  but  take  notice  of 
the  claims  of  classical  literature  upon  the  modern 
attention.  That  he  did  so  with  greater  zest  and 
to  better  advantage  than  his  fellows  is  signifi 
cant.  It  is  told  that  he  read  "  Latin  as  readily  as 
English,"  and  "  Greek  without  difficulty."  2  He 
was  a  more  careful  scholar,  in  this  as  in  other 
fields,  than  Emerson.  Thoreau  "never  had  a 
good  word  to  say  for  Plato  "  —  possibly  because 
he  distrusted  the  Neo-Platonism  of  Emerson ; 
but  he  "  read  all  the  Greek  poets  in  the  orig 
inal.'^ 

It  seems  too  much  to  say  what  a  recent  writer 
has  said,  that  "he  was  almost  a  transplanted 
Greek."  He  was  no  Greek  at  all  in  respect  of 
temper  —  unless,  indeed,  Greek  life  was  a  life  of 
eccentricity  and  the  Greek  spirit  was  the  spirit 

1  Dial,  iv,  404. 

2  F.  B.  Sanborn,  Personality  of  Thoreau,  p.  36.        8  Ibid. 


98  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

of  exaggeration.  Thoreau  announced  what  is  al 
most  a  gospel  of  exaggeration :  "  I  desire  to  speak 
somewhere  without  bounds ;  for  I  am  convinced 
that  I  cannot  exaggerate  enough  even  to  lay  the 
foundation  of  a  true  expression."  He  did  not  be 
gin  to  have  the  balance  of  temper  which  warns 
that  important  truth  can  scarcely  be  arrived  at 
by  assertion  or  founded  on  exaggeration.  In 
general,  he  confessed  in  the  "  Week,"  he  found 
Greece  and  Rome  "tame";  though  he  praised 
Homer  like  a  wild  boy  —  crediting  him  with  ab 
solute  realism  and  perfect  naturalness,  a  magic 
power  to  describe  the  morning  itself  rather  than 
an  impression  of  it,  and  so  on.  He  was  relished 
in  his  day,  it  is  said,  as  being  "  the  only  man 
who  thoroughly  loved  both  Nature  and  Greek." 
He  spoke  without  bounds  concerning  Greece,  and 

f  he  spoke  without  bounds  concerning  Nature ;  dis 
closing,  perhaps,  that  he  knew  the  human  bear- 

'  ings  of  neither  any  too  well. 

Yet  Greece  furnished  Thoreau  a  very  effec 
tive  means  for  artistic  discipline  in  the  way  of  a 
standard  outside  of  New  England  and  himself. 
Emerson  had  said  in  the  "  Dial "  that  the  clas 
sics  gave  "  the  purest  pleasure  accessible  to  hu 
man  nature."  Thoreau  assured  the  readers  of 
"  Walden  "  that  "  the  student  may  read  Homer 
or  ^Eschylus  in  the  Greek  without  danger  of 
dissipation  or  luxuriousness,  for  it  implies  that 


READING  99 

he  in  some  measure  emulate  their  heroes,  and 
consecrate  morning  hours  to  their  pages."  Be 
sides,  Greece  was  favored  by  the  gods  with  the 
gift  of  perfection ;  "  over  Greece  hangs  the  divine 
necessity,  a  mellow  heaven  of  itself,"  he  wrote 
in  "  The  Service."  There  was  sufficient  exhorta 
tion  in  the  "  Dial "  to  "  study  their  works  and 
learn  their  methods."  Emerson  was  only  express 
ing  a  general  transcendental  conviction  when  he 
commended  the  study  of  the  Greeks  to  the  writer 
because  they  "  prune  his  orations  and  point  his 
pen."  Thoreau's  study  of  the  Greek  Anthology 
enabled  him  to  write  at  least  two  pointed  and  ex 
cellent  poems.  One, "  Mist,"  almost  purely  Greek 
and  quite  without  fault,  Chohnondeley  consid 
ered  Thoreau's  best  piece  :  — 

"  Low-anchored  cloud, 
Newfoundland  air, 
Fountain-head  and  source  of  rivers, 
Dew-cloth,  dream-drapery, 
And  napkin  spread  by  fays ; 
Drifting  meadow  of  the  air, 
Where  bloom  the  daisied  banks  and  violets, 
And  in  whose  fenny  labyrinth 
The  bittern  booms  and  heron  wades  ; 
Spirit  of  lakes  and  seas  and  rivers, 
Bear  only  perfumes  and  the  scent 
Of  healing  herbs  to  just  men's  fields." 

The  other,  "  Smoke,"  scarcely  less  Greek  or  more 
exceptionable,  Emerson  thought  suggested  Simon- 


100  HENRY  DAVID   THOREAU 

ides  —  "  but  is  better  than  any  poem  of  Simoni- 
des":- 

"  Light-winged  Smoke,  Icarian  bird, 
Melting  thy  pinions  in  thy  upward  flight, 
Lark  without  song,  and  messenger  of  dawn, 
Circling  above  the  hamlets  as  thy  nest; 
Or  else,  departing  dream,  and  shadowy  form 
Of  midnight  vision,  gathering  up  thy  skirts; 
By  night  star-veiling,  and  by  day 
Darkening  the  light  and  blotting  out  the  sun; 
Go  thou  my  incense  upward  from  this  hearth, 
And  ask  the  gods  to  pardon  this  clear  flame." 

These  and  similar  exercises  furnished  no  such 
discipline  as  Matthew  Arnold  sought  in  the 
classics,  and  it  can  scarcely  be  said  that  any  of 
the  American  transcendentalists  was  diligent 
and  patient  enough  to  reap  the  "  high  benefit  of 
clearly  feeling  and  deeply  enjoying  the  really  ex 
cellent."  Thoreau  spoke  of  classical  studies  as 
"  composing  ";  but  genuine  composure  was  not  a 
transcendental  virtue. 

"  If  men  read  aright,  methinks  they  would 
never  read  anything  but  poems,"  runs  a  passage 
in  the  "  Week."  Thoreau,  who  devoted  his  col 
lege  days  to  working  in  the  mine  of  old  English 
poetry,  owes  more  to  the  styles  and  the  tempera 
ments  of  the  early  poets  than  he  owes  to  any  other 
group  of  writers.  Hardly  a  page  is  not  reminis 
cent  of  one  of  them.  "  Old  Chaucer's  breadth  " 
taught  him  that  "there  is  no  wisdom  which  can 


READING      '' 

take  the  place  of  humanity";1  and  Chaucer's 
clearness  and  raciness  were  by  no  means  lost  on 
Thoreau's  style.  The  subtle  qualities  of  Daniel 
were  not  lost  on  Thoreau.  The  admirable  stanza 
beginning  the  poem  "  To  the  Lady  Margaret, 
Countess  of  Cumberland  ":  — 

"  He  that  of  such  a  height  hath  built  his  mind, 
And  rear'd  the  dwelling  of  his  thoughts  so  strong, 
As  neither  fear  nor  hope  can  shake  the  frame 
Of  his  resolved  powers;  nor  all  the  wind 
Of  vanity  or  malice  pierce  to  wrong 
His  settled  peace,  or  to  disturb  the  same; 
What  a  fair  seat  hath  he,  from  whence  he  may 
The  boundless  wastes  and  wilds  of  man  survey  !  "  — 

might  have  been  a  text  for  an  essay ;  he  did 
quote  time  and  again  the  famous  lines  from  the 
same  poem,  — 

"  Unless  above  himself  he  can 
Erect  himself,  how  poor  a  thing  is  man." 

He  thought  Daniel  deserved  praise  "for  his 
moderation,"  and  said,  "  We  can  well  believe 
that  he  was  a  retired  scholar,  who  would  keep 
himself  shut  up  in  his  house  two  whole  months 
together."  He  thought  both  Donne  and  Daniel 
had  "strong  sense,"  and  respected  the  former 
because  he  had  the  "  patience  of  a  day  laborer."  2 
He  admired  Drayton's  vigor,  independence,  and 
realism,  and  he  commended  old  English  tragedy 
1  Journal,  i,  301.  2  Ibid.,  I,  467. 


102  .HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

because  "it  says  something,"  moves  "toward 
some  conclusion,"  "  has  to  do  with  things,"  is 
"  downright  and  manly,"  and  because  its  writers 
"  come  to  the  point  and  do  not  waste  the  time." 1 
He  had  not  much  patience  with  the  romantic 
criticism  of  Shakespeare,2  believing  that  the 
critics  obscured  his  "chief  characteristics  of 
reality  and  unaffected  manliness."  He  quotes 
often  enough  from  Shakespeare ;  but  he  did  not 
reverence  him  as  he  reverenced  Milton. 

Thoreau's  favorite  and  most  important  resort 
in  old  English  poetry  was  to  the  religious  poets 
of  the  seventeenth  century  —  Donne,  Vaughan, 
Crashaw,  Quarles,  and  Herbert.  He  was  gen 
uinely  akin  to  them  in  temperament,  found 
their  themes  congenial,  and  made  the  most  of 
their  metrical  example.  They  were  much  in 
favor  with  the  New  England  transcendentalists. 
Emerson  was  devoted  to  Herbert  from  the  be 
ginning,  and  Alcott  had  only  one  contemporary 
in  his  list  of  favorite  poets :  Wordsworth,  Milton, 
Donne,  Vaughan,  Crashaw,  Herbert,  Quarles, 
and  Cowley. 

In  the  main  Thoreau's  affinity  with  these  poets 
was  temperamental  and  spiritual;  he  admired 
Quarles  only  for  his  metallic  qualities  of  verse 
and  voice,  and  his  eminently  sturdy  constitution. 
He  found  in  him  "  plenty  of  tough,  crooked  tim- 
1  Journal,  I,  465.  a  Rid.,  i,  466. 


READING  103 

ber,"  and  wrote  in  his  Journal,1  "  Quarles  is 
never  weak  or  shallow,  though  coarse  and  uu- 
tasteful.  He  presses  able-bodied  and  strong- 
backed  words  into  his  service,  which  have  a  cer 
tain  rustic  fragrance  and  force,  as  if  now  first 
devoted  to  literature  after  having  served  sincere 
and  stern  uses  ...  a  right  manly  accent."  In  the 
main  Thoreau  was  drawn  by  their  sober  intro 
spection  and  intense  concentration  to  the  seven 
teenth-century  religious  poets,  preferring  them 
on  this  ground  to  the  Elizabethans.  Milton  he 
read  always,  valuing  him  "  above  Shakespeare," 
and  getting  "  Lycidas  "  by  heart.  In  the  others 
their  more  morbid  and  egoistic  elements  of  ec 
centricity  and  nervous,  crabbed  intensity  fasci 
nated  him.  Their  poetry  was  made  pretty  largely 
out  of  the  nerves,  and  Thoreau  was  not  without 
nerves.  He  repaired  to  them  for  the  discipline  of 
their  form,  but  indulged  himself  in  the  vehe 
mence  of  their  sentiment.  Like  them,  he  could 
not  finish  a  poem  as  bravely  as  he  could  begin  it. 
Thoreau  probably  felt  the  seventeenth  century 
most  through  George  Herbert,  whose  almost 
morbid  sensitiveness  to  details,  whose  strained 
simplicity,  whose  tremulous  purity,  whose  low- 
voiced  passion  combined  with  what  Emerson  de 
scribed  as  his"  hard  mentality,"  his  "  grip  and  ex 
actitude  of  mind,"  and  his  "  mental  materialism  " 
1  Journal,  i,  458-59. 


104  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

to  make  Thoreau  something,  certainly,  of  what 
he  was.  Thoreau  had  very  little  to  say  explicitly 
about  Herbert,  just  as  he  had  little  to  say  about 
Emerson,  another  prime  influence  in  his  life. 
Emerson  and  Herbert  —  at  least  the  qualities 
of  mind  they  represented  —  Thoreau  took  for 
granted.  He  could  never  weld  a  poem  as  heated 
and  as  pure  as  the  best  of  Herbert ;  he  was  with 
difficulty  sweet.  But  the  signs  of  his  vain  striv 
ings  are  many ;  and  the  Herbert  in  him  never 
died.  The  youth  who  drew  his  breath  in  pain  for 
every  line  of  poetry  he  tried,  did  not  outgrow 
that  pain,  however  early  he  ceased  trying  to  write 
poetry ;  he  wrote  nervous  and  excellent  prose 
largely  by  virtue  of  it. 

Thoreau  seems  to  have  been  bent  very  early 
toward  Herbert.  The  best  poem  from  his  early 
period,  and  one  of  the  best  of  all  his  poems, "  Sic 
Vita"  (1837),  is  unmistakably  like  the  Herbert 
of  "  Employment"  and  "  Denial  "  and  the  rest  in 
almost  every  technical  feature  :  — 

"  I  am  a  parcel  of  vain  strivings  tied 

By  a  chance  bond  together, 
Dangling  this  way  and  that,  their  links 
Were  made  so  loose  and  wide, 

Methinks, 
For  milder  weather. 

11 A  bunch  of  violets  without  their  roots, 
And  sorrel  intermixed, 


READING  105 

Encircled  by  a  wisp  of  straw 
Once  coiled  about  their  shoots, 

The  law 
By  which  I  'm  fixed. 

"  A  nosegay  which  Time  clutched  from  out 

Those  fair  Elysian  fields, 
With  weeds  and  broken  stems,  in  haste, 
Doth  make  the  rabble  rout 

That  waste 
The  day  he  yields. 

'*  And  here  I  bloom  for  a  short  hour  unseen. 

Drinking  my  juices  up, 
With  no  root  in  the  land 
To  keep  my  branches  green, 

But  stand 
In  a  bare  cup. 

"  Some  tender  buds  were  left  upon  my  stem 

In  mimicry  of  life, 
But  ah  !  the  children  will  not  know, 
Till  time  has  withered  them, 

The  woe 
With  which  they  're  rife. 

"  But  now  I  see  I  was  not  plucked  for  naught, 

And  after  in  life's  vase 
Of  glass  set  while  I  might  survive, 
But  by  a  kind  hand  brought 

Alive 
To  a  strange  place. 

"  That  stock  thus  thinned  will  soon  redeem  its 

hours, 
And  by  another  year, 


106  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

Such  as  God  knows,  with  freer  air, 
More  fruits  and  fairer  flowers 

Will  bear, 
While  I  droop  here."  * 

1  EMPLOYMENT 

If  as  a  flower  doth  spread  and  die, 

Thou  wouldst  extend  me  to  some  good, 
Before  I  were  by  frost's  extremity 

Nipt  in  the  bud, 

The  sweetness  and  the  praise  were  Thine, 

But  the  extension  and  the  room, 
Which  in  Thy  garland  I  should  fill,  were  mine 
At  Thy  great  doom. 

For  as  Thou  dost  impart  Thy  grace, 
The  greater  shall  our  glory  be. 
The  measure  of  our  joys  is  in  this  place, 

The  stuff  with  Thee. 

Let  me  not  languish  then,  and  spend 

A  life  as  barren  to  Thy  praise 
As  is  the  dust  to  which  that  life  doth  tend, 
But  with  delays. 

All  things  are  busy  ;  only  I 

Neither  bring  honey  with  the  bees, 
Nor  flowers  to  make  that,  nor  the  husbandry 
To  water  these. 

I  am  no  link  of  Thy  great  chain, 

But  all  my  company  is  a  weed. 
Lord,  place  me  in  Thy  concert ;  give  one  strain 
To  my  poor  reed. 

DENIAL 

When  my  devotions  could  not  pierce 
Thy  silent  ears, 


READING  107 

An  inferior  poem  of  the  next  year,  called 
"Friendship"  in  the  Journal,1  continues  the 
tradition :  — 

Then  was  ray  heart  broken,  as  was  my  verse  ; 
My  breast  was  full  of  fears 

And  disorder. 

My  bent  thoughts,  like  a  brittle  bow, 
Did  fly  asunder : 

Each  took  his  way ;  some  would  to  pleasures  go, 
Some  to  the  wars  and  thunder 
Of  alarms. 

As  good  go  anywhere  they  say, 

As  to  benumb 

Both  knees  and  heart  in  crying  night  and  day, 
"  Come,  come,  my  God,  0  come  !  " 
But  no  hearing. 

O  that  Thou  shouldst  give  dust  a  tongue 

To  cry  to  thee, 

And  then  not  hear  it  crying  !  All  day  long 
My  heart  was  in  my  knee, 

But  no  hearing. 

Therefore  my  soul  lay  out  of  sight, 

Untuned,  unstrung : 
My  feeble  spirit,  unable  to  look  right, 
Like  a  nipt  blossom  hung 

Discontented. 

0  cheer  and  tune  my  heartless  breast, 

Defer  no  time ; 

That  so  Thy  favors  granting  my  request, 
They  and  my  mind  may  chime, 

And  mend  my  rhyme. 

1  Journal,  I,  40-41. 


108  HENRY  DAVID   THOREAU 

"I  think  awhile  of  Love,  and,  while  I  think, 
Love  is  to  me  a  world, 
Sole  meat  and  sweetest  drink, 
And  close  connecting  link 
'Tween  heaven  and  earth. 

"  I  only  know  it  is,  not  how  or  why, 
My  greatest  happiness  ; 
However  hard  I  try, 
Not  if  I  were  to  die, 
Can  I  explain. 

"  I  fain  would  ask  my  friend  how  it  can  be, 
But,  when  the  time  arrives, 
Then  Love  is  more  lovely 
Than  anything  to  me, 
And  so  I  'm  dumb." 


Hereafter  the  visible  signs  of  Herbert  in  Thoreau 
fade ;  but  the  quiet,  passionate  conviction  which 
was  the  mark  of  his  early  style  is  not  extinguished 
by  maturer  sarcasm,  nor  even  stung  to  death  by 
wild-apple  tang.  Herbert  could  not  enlist  Thoreau 
in  the  enterprise  of  "  making  humility  lovely  in 
the  eyes  of  all  men  " ;  but  he  could  teach  him  in 
some  measure  his  technique  of  living  —  how  to 
feel,  and  how  to  write. 


VI 

POSITION 

THOREAU'S  permanent,  best  qualities  —  his 
sly  and  edged  excellence,  his  leavening  power  — 
come  into  fuller  recognition  as  his  less  essential 
qualities  are  subtracted  and  retreat.  He  is  prop 
erly  discounted  only  as  his  readers  grow  civil 
ized  and  distrust  the  exposition  of  the  elemen 
tary  ;  he  will  come  fully  into  his  own  when  there 
is  no  one  left  who  takes  him  literally  and  recom 
mends  his  audacity  as  either  profound  or  ulti 
mate.  The  by-products  of  his  living  and  his 
thinking  —  the  excellences  of  the  "Week"  and 
"  Walden,"  and  whatever  he  prepared  for  print 
—  are  more  essential  than  their  central  product, 
the  extravagances  of  the  Journal.  His  theory  of 
life,  so  neatly  conceived,  so  skillfully  and  vari 
ously  expressed,  so  pointedly  reinforced  by  read 
ing  and  quotation,  comes  ultimately  to  seem  futile 
and  somewhat  less  than  adequate ;  while  the  very 
neatness  of  conception,  the  very  skill  and  variety 
and  flavor  of  expression,  the  very  quotations,  en 
dure.  That  Thoreau's  main  product  was  nothing, 
and  his  main  effort  vain,  his  own  Journal  best 
betrays.  Emerson  thought  "  he  had  exhausted  all 
the  capabilities  of  life  in  this  world."  The  many 


110  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

pages  of  the  Journal  which  uncover  his  private 
sense  of  bewilderment  and  pain  when  friends 
disappeared  and  confess  his  growing  impotence 
in  expansion,  are  the  flattest  denial  that  Thoreau 
died  with  any  such  conviction  in  his  heart. 

Yet  the  Journal  is  also  the  best  witness  that 
it  was  indeed  Thoreau's  ambition  to  exhaust  all 
the  capabilities  of  life  in  this  world.  Better 
still,  the  Journal  reveals  why  he  had  to  fail.  It 
/  is  the  Journal  which  gives  the  best  clue  to  the 
character  of  Thoreau's  thinking,  which  gives  to 
understand  that  Thoreau's  whole  philosophical 
significance  is  involved  in  the  fact  that  he 
thought  in  a  vacuum. 

It  is  very  specifically  that  Thoreau  says  he  in 
habits  a  vacuum,  and  it  is  very  adroitly  that  he 
defends  his  choice  of  habitation ;  it  is  perhaps 
in  spite  of  himself  that  he  proves  better  than 
almost  any  other  theorizer  the  ultimate  futility 
of  all  living  in  a  vacuum.  At  any  rate,  his  very 
clear  remarks  upon  the  subject,  and  his  most 
relentless  pursuit  of  its  essence,  make  him  a 
very  satisfactory  figure  in  which  to  observe  its 
bearings  and  its  consequences.  Within  his  vac 
uum  Thoreau  was  to  become  perfect  with  the 
least  difficulty,  was  to  be  reborn  into  the  Uni 
verse  with  the  slightest  travail.  He  was  to  be  all 
that  Man  can  be,  at  once  and  forever.  He  was 
to  find  Reality  and  keep  it  for  a  companion.  By 


POSITION  111 

taking  thought  he  was  to  achieve  absolute  glory. 
And  all  would  be  very  easy.  "  The  brave  man 
braves  nothing,"  he  boasted  in  "  The  Service." 
"  What  a  hero  one  can  be  without  moving  a  fin 
ger  ! "  "  Not  having  anything  to  do,  to  do  some 
thing."  To  be  a  real  man  —  how  extremely  easy, 
if  only  one  has  courage  to  slough  real  responsi 
bilities  !  Intellectual  perfection  was  quite  within 
reach.  "  One  may  have  many  thoughts  and  not 
decide  anything,"  decided  Thoreau.  He  had  only 
to  knock  the  bottom  out  of  his  consciousness  to 
know  how  unfathomably  profound  he  was.  He 
had  only  to  withdraw  into  a  dark  corner  to  wit 
ness  how  pure  white  was  the  flame  of  his  thought. 
Moral  perfection  was  even  a  simpler  matter  in 
vacuo.  Emerson  had  thrown  out  the  disconcert 
ing  statement  in  "  The  Transcendentalist  "  that 
"  We  have  yet  no  man  who  has  leaned  entirely 
upon  his  character."  Thoreau  could  do  that  eas 
ily  enough.  All  he  needed  to  do  was  to  "rise 
above  the  necessity  of  virtue,"  so  that  his  vices 
would  "  necessarily  trail  behind,"  and  to  facilitate 
the  operation  of  the  will  by  removing  all  the 
occasions  for  exercising  it.  He  could  not  but  be 
perfect  when  he  was  above  having  to  be  tested. 
He  could  solve  any  problem  in  his  vacuum  ab 
solutely  to  his  satisfaction.  He  proposed,  for  in- 
stance,  to 

"  Find  out  heaven 
By  not  "knowing  hell." 


112  HENRY  DAVID   THOREAU 

Complete  aesthetic  and  spiritual  satisfaction 
also  came  easily  in  the  vacuum.  The  humming 
of  a  telegraph-wire  could  supply  the  first;  the 
second  was  inherent  in  a  life  of  vacuous  expan 
sion.  "  Simplify,  simplify !  "  cried  Thoreau  like 
a  Rousseau  in  "  Walden."  In  his  vacuum  he 
f  simplified  the  meaning  of  exaltation  of  soul  until 
it  became  equivalent  to  the  sensation  of  expan 
sion,  equivalent  to  the  reminder  (from  anywhere) 
"  that  there  were  higher,  infinitely  higher,  planes 
of  life  which  it  behooved  me  never  to  forget." l 
That  sensation  and  that  reminder  he  demanded 
infinite  room  to  indulge  and  hearken  for.  No 
other  mortal  could  be  near ;  only  the  universe, 
the  equivalent  of  self,  was  to  attend.  A  real 
spiritual  existence  was  at  stake.  The  duty  of 
the  self  was  to  comprehend  reality;  reality  was 
to  be  found  only  in  the  whole  —  the  universe ; 
therefore  the  duty  of  the  individual  was  to  be 
take  himself  where  the  universe  in  reality  was. 
But  the  self  by  its  own  nature  was  fitted  not 
only  for  comprehending  the  universe,  but  for  be 
ing  the  universe  as  well ;  so  that  to  be  one's  self 
was  the  only  legitimate  aspiration  of  man.  To 
magnify  the  self,  to  have  sensations  of  infini 
tude,  to  thrum  with  the  excitement  of  the  uni 
verse,  was  the  ambition  of  the  man  who  went  to 
V_Walden  Pond. 

1  Journal,  n,  497. 


POSITION  113 

Thoreau  speaks  in  the  Journal  some  thirty 
times  of  the  excitement  which  the  humming 
of  a  telegraph-wire  caused  within  him.  "  He 
thought  the  best  of  music  was  in  single  strains," 
said  Emerson ;  a  single  strain  of  music  was  for 
him  that  "  finest  strain  that  a  human  ear  can 
hear."  "  The  laws  of  Nature  break  the  rules 
of  Art";  the  telegraph-wire  tolc^iim  more 
about  himself  —  brought  the  universe  closer 
around  him  —  than  the  noblest  symphony.  For 
symphonies,  being  civilized,  presuppose  rules 
and  intelligence,  while  the  telegraph-wire  — 
"  When  we  listen  to  it  we  are  so  wise  that  we 
need  not  to  know."  l 

«he  telegraph-wire,  which  Thoreau  does  not 
tion  after  1854  (probably  because  he  thought 
he  had  exhausted  its  meaning),  had  been  signifi 
cant  to  him  because  it  had  seemed  intensely 
spiritual.  It  had  concentrated  into  a  single  strain 
the  meaning  of  the  universe,  had  furnished  him 
at  no  expense  (at  no  cost  of  "  life  ")  the  entire 
spiritual  stock  which  it  is  possible  for  man  to 
accumulate.  If  Thoreau  lost  faith  in  the  tele 
graph-wire,  he  never  ceased  to  believe  what 
Emerson  had  spent  his  life  preaching:  that 
"  spirit  "is  a  single  fact,  that  the  soul  has  a 
single  voice,  that  all  spiritual  values  are  indis- 
tinguishably  blended  in  one  experience  —  In- 
1  The  Service,  13. 


114  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

spiration.  Any  source  of  inspiration  suffices; 
the  exaltation  is  the  thing ;  man  should  be  ready 
to  be  anything,  in  the  ecstasy  of  being  stimu 
lated.  Thoreau  never  lost  faith,  as  Emerson 
never  did,  in  this  Inspiration,  this  facile  mo 
nopoly  of  spiritual  privileges.  When  he  found 
the  world  unsatisfactory,  he  scarcely  knew  why 
—  and  blamed  the  world.  He  scarcely  suspected 
that  his  imxnsity  was  distilling  the  essence  out 
of  a  vacuum,  and  not  out  of  life. 

Such  men,  complained  Pascal,  "  inspire  no 
tions  of  simple  greatness,  and  that  is  not  the 
state  of  man."  Thoreau's  spiritual  existence  was 
more  than  easy ;  it  was  hopelessly,  fatally  easy. 

"'  Assure  himself  as  he  might  that  his  own  will 
the  will  of  the  universe,  that  thought  and 
ing  are  indistinguishable,  that  soul  and  body  are 
one,  that  necessity  is  sweet,  that  good  and  evil 
are  phantoms  easy  to  dissolve,  yet  he  never  suc 
ceeded  in  stepping  entirely  out  of  his  little  pri 
vate  darkness.  Perhaps  he  read  George  Herbert's 

'exhortation,  in  "  The  Church  Porch,"  to  self- 
scrutiny  :  — 

"  By  all  means  use  sometimes  to  be  alone. 

Salute  thy  self,  see  what  thy  soul  doth  wear. 
Dare  to  look  in  thy  chest,  for  't  is  thine  own, 

And  tumble  up  and  down  what  thou  find'st  there." 

But  if  he  read  it,  he  read  it  wrong,  read  it  with 
out  the  "  sometimes "  ;  took  it  literally  and  ab- 


POSITION  115 

solutely.  And  so  doing,  he  fell  into  the  error 
which  Bacon  describes  as  proceeding  "from  too 
great  a  reverence,  and  a  kind  of  adoration  of 
the  mind  and  understanding  of  man ;  by  means 
whereof  men  have  withdrawn  themselves  too 
much  from  the  contemplation  of  nature,  and  the 
observations  of  experience,  and  have  tumbled  up 
and  down  in  their  own  reason  and  conceits. 
Upon  these  intellectualists,"  Bacon  goes  on  to 
say, "  which  are  notwithstanding  commonly  taken 
for  the  most  sublime  and  divine  philosophers, 
Heraclitus  gave  a  just  censure,  saying,  Men 
sought  truth  in  their  own  little  worlds,  and  not 
in  the  great  and  common  world ;  for  they  dis 
dain  to  spell,  and  so  by  degrees  to  read  in  the 
volume  of  God's  works;  and  contrariwise  by 
continual  meditation  and  agitation  of  wit  do 
urge  and  as  it  were  invocate  their  own  spirits  to 
divine  and  give  oracles  unto  them,  whereby  they 
are  deservedly  deluded." 

Thoreau  deluded  himself,  not  because  he  was 
introspective,  but  because  he  was  introspective 
in  a  certain  mistaken,  fruitless  way.  His  specu 
lations  and  experiences,  intellectual,  moral,  es 
thetic,  yielded  no  important  results,  not  because 
they  were  private,  but  because  their  privacy  was 
their  sole  end  and  aim.  Plato  and  Shakespeare 
were  introspective,  and  learned  to  know  the 
world  in  private ;  but  the  world  they  learned  to 


116  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

know  was  large  and  important,  the  "  great  and 
common  world."  They  studied  themselves  along 
with  the  rest  of  the  world  —  Plato  his  opinions 
with  the  opinions  of  other  men,  Shakespeare  his 
impressions  with  the  impressions  of  other  men ; 
Thoreau  studied  himself  alone  —  his  opinions 
and  his  impressions  by  themselves.  Shakespeare 
and  Plato,  like  all  men  who  are  versed  in  the 
arts  of  comparison  or  dialectic,  studied  them 
selves  as  members  of  the  universe;  Thoreau 
studied  himself  as  the  universe.  Shakespeare  and 
Plato  sought  to  learn  their  bearings  in  the 
world;  Thoreau  lost  sight  of  bearings,  and 
sought  to  be  the  world  itself.  Thoreau  deluded 
himself  precisely  in  proportion  as  he  refused  to 
keep  the  very  delicate  balance  which  it  is  neces 
sary  for  a  great  and  good  man  to  keep  between 
his  private  and  his  public  lives,  between  his  own 
personality  and  the  whole  outside  universe  of 
personalities.  Thoreau's  introspection  was  sterile 
in  so  far  as  it  was  a  brooding  reverie  of  self-con 
templation  rather  than  an  effort  to  measure  and 
,  correct  and  check  himself  by  reference  to  things 
V  beyond  himself.  His  counsel  of  perfection  is 
meaningless  to  others  in  so  far  as  it  is  intended  to 
be  realized  in  a  vacuum,  apart  from  contacts  or 
comparisons ;  it  was  useless  to  him  in  that  it  did 
not  permit  of  friction  with  other  perfections,  did 
not  provide  for  that  jostling  and  settling  into 


POSITION  117 

place  which  the  seasoned  philosophy  of  life  has 
undergone.  It  is  clear  that  Thoreau  could  not 
see  the  bearings  of  his  vacuous  and  expansive 
effort:  "Is  it  all  my  fault? "he  asked  in  the 
Journal.1  "  Have  I  no  heart?  Am  I  incapable 
of  expansion  and  generosity  ?  I  shall  accuse  my 
self  of  everything  else  sooner."  It  is  clear  enough 
that  he  was  incapable  of  distinguishing  between 
fruitless  and  fruitful  expansion  —  the  expansion 
which  merely  distends  the  self  at  the  present 
stage  of  its  ignorance,  and  the  expansion  which 
really  enlarges  the  self  by  thrusting  it  out  into 
play  with  surrounding  selves.  Stevenson  sug 
gests  that  "  the  world's  heroes  have  room  for  all 
positive  qualities,  even  those  which  are  disrepu 
table,  in  the  capacious  theaters  of  their  disposi 
tions.  Such  can  live  many  lives,  while  Thoreau 
can  live  but  one,  and  that  with  continual  fore 
sight."  Thoreau  refused  pretty  consistently  to  be 
lieve  that  there  was  any  other  life  besides  his  own. 
"  You  think,"  he  addressed  an  imaginary  critic  in 
the  later  Journal,2  "  that  I  am  impoverishing  my 
self  by  withdrawing  from  men,  but  in  my  solitude 
I  have  woven  for  myself  a  silken  web  or  chrysalis, 
and,  nymph-like,  shall  ere  long  burst  forth  a 
more  perfect  creature,  fitted  for  a  higher  society." 
A  very  brave  hope,  but  unrealized  anywhere  in 
his  career,  if  the  Journal  is  to  be  believed. 
1  Journal,  iv,  314.  2  Ibid.,  ix,  246. 


118  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

If  it  is  asked  what  led  Thoreau  into  his  error, 
what  led  him  to  believe  he  could  find  out  all 
things  by  and  in  himself,  perhaps  Matthew  Ar 
nold  gives  the  keenest  answer :  "The  blundering 
to  be  found  in  the  world,"  says  Arnold,  u  comes 
from  some  people  fancying  that  some  idea  is  a 
definite  and  ascertained  thing,  like  the  idea  pf_a 
triangle,  when  it  is  not."  The  difficulty  with 
Thoreau,  as  with  many  a  philosopher  during  the 
nineteenth  century,  was  that  he  had  hypostatized 
an  abstraction  and  seen  his  own  reflection  in  it. 
During  that  century,  the  seedtime  of  the  mod 
ern  social  soul,  when  the  sun  withheld  its  warmth 
and  mankind  suffered  growing-pains,  abstrac 
tions  seemed  blessed  beyond  all  other  commodi 
ties  because  they  held  out  most  promise  of  nour 
ishment,  of  hope  for  the  solution  of  the  secret 
of  life.  When  nine  tenths  of  life  seemed  flowing 
away,  men  were  wont  to  seek  refuge  on  the 
island  of  an  abstraction.  When  mind  and  heart 
and  soul  were  being  explained  away,  men  dog 
gedly  identified  themselves  with  certain  func 
tions  of  their  minds  and  hearts  and  souls  and 
demanded  immunity.  "  Elsewhere  the  world  may 
change,  but  oh !  not  here  !  "  they  cried.  Hallow 
ing  abstractions  in  the  face  of  doubt,  clutching 
at  phenomena  of  consciousness  in  the  face  of 
science,  they  preached  and  lived  vehemently  all 
their  lives  what  right  reason  condemns  as  inade- 


POSITION  119 

quate  and  provincial.  «  Work,"  "  Art,"  "  Hap 
piness,"  "Beauty,"  "Inspiration,"  "Keality" 
rode  the  century  relentlessly.  Belief  was  ade 
quate  if  sincere  and  passionate.  Men  lived  fully 
enough  if  they  represented  some  quality  or  as 
pect  of  human  nature  to  the  consistent  exclusion 
of  other  aspects  and  qualities ;  if  they  were 
gripped  and  warped  by  a  concept  or  stamped  in 
an  attitude,  and  forgot  all  else.  Men  of  that 
time  are  not  so  much  men  as  faculties  —  not  so 
much  individual  human  beings  as  individual 
forces.  Carlyle  is  a  whole  universe  in  miniature, 
"creaking,  groaning,  tortuous."  Coleridge,  says 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  is  "  a  lump  of  coal  rich  with 
gas,  which  lies  expending  itself  in  puffs  and 
gleams,  unless  some  shrewd  body  will  clap  it  into 
a  cast-iron  box,  and  compel  the  compressed  ele 
ment  to  do  itself  justice."  Byron  is  an  angry, 
glowing  cheek.  Keats  is  an  odor  hanging  heavily 
close  to  the  earth.  Shelley  is  a  mad  bird  who 
would  fly  higher  than  is  possible.  Wordsworth 
is  a  column  of  white  mist  moving  among  the 
hills.  Ruskin  is  a  swift,  fevered  river.  Emerson 
is  an  electric  wire  snapping  and  emitting  bril 
liant,  cold  sparks.  Thoreau  is  a  pard-like  hunter, 
moving  quietly  whither  he  likes  and  refusing  to 
be  touched. 

Thoreau  is  one  of  the  most  deliberate  of  all 
hypostatizers.  Born  into  a  philosophical  school 


120  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

whose  ideas  were  already  well  formed,  younger 
by  ten  years  than  most  of  its  adherents,  and  with 
a  craftman's  mind  for  visualizing  details,  it  is  no 
wonder  that  he,  most  scrupulously  of  all  men  in 
America  or  Europe,  should  have  assumed  to  be 
real,  and  attempted  to  live,  the  generalizations 
of  Goethe  and  the  abstractions  of  the  transcen 
dental  philosophy.  Nor  is  it  surprising  that, 
with  his  passion  for  the  specific,  he  should  have 
hypostatized  a  little  more  strenuously  than 
he  did  such  abstractions  as  Character,  Will, 
Spirit,  Moral  Nature  of  Man,  Life,  Self,  the 
Present,  —  that  he  should  have  hypostatized 
more  strenuously  than  he  did  those  abstractions, 
the  quality  of  "  Keality."  It  is  not  surprising 
that  a  man  so  quixotically  practical  should  have 
asserted,  when  he  heard  his  contemporaries  com 
plaining  that  life  had  lost  its  realities,  that 
Reality  did  exist,  and  that  he  would  go  out  and 
capture  it.  The  hypostatizing  of  Eeality  is  the 
simplest  of  everyday  occurrences.  Children  be 
lieve  that  grown-ups  are  realler  than  themselves, 
and  countrymen  fancy  that  real  life  is  to  be  had 
for  the  seeking  in  cities.  The  man  who  went  out 
wolfishly  to  "  live  deep  and  suck  out  all  the  mar 
row  of  life,  to  cut  a  broad  swath  and  shave  close, 
to  drive  life  into  a  corner,  and  reduce  it  to  its 
lowest  terms,  and,  if  it  proved  to  be  mean,  why, 
then  to  get  the  whole  and  genuine  meanness  of 


POSITION  121 

it,  and  publish  its  meanness  to  the  world,"  leaves 
no  one  doubting  that  the  monster  which  pursued 
him  was  Keality  hypostatized  into  life  and  turned 
loose  upon  him.  Keality  and  its  pard-like  hunter 
—  these  make  up  "the  Thoreau."  Thoreau's 
whole  life  was  a  search  for  embodied  Eeality, 
and  his  whole  contention  on  paper  is  that  Real 
ity  is  accessible.  "  How  to  live,  how  to  get  the 
most  out  of  life,  how  to  extract  the  honey  from 
the  flower  of  the  world.  That  is  my  every-day 
business.  I  am  as  busy  as  a  bee  about  it,"  is  not 
the  only  passage  of  its  kind  in  the  Journal.  "  Be 
it  life  or  death,"  he  adds,  "  we  crave  only  real 
ity."  He  is  confident  that  "  there  is  a  solid  bot 
tom  everywhere  "  if  we  only  have  the  courage  to 
sink  to  it.  "  Let  us  settle  ourselves  and  work  and 
wedge  our  feet  downward  through  the  mud  and 
slush  of  opinion  and  prejudice  and  tradition, 
and  delusion,  and  appearance, ...  to  a  hard  bot 
tom  and  rock  in  place  —  which  we  can  call  real- 

ity." 

When  Thoreau  says  he  is  seeking  "what 
was  always  and  always  must  be  because  it  really 
is  now,"  the  temptation  is  irresistible  to  speculate 
upon  the  probability  of  his  success.  It  is  easy  to 
guess  that  he  will  look  nowhere  outside  himself 
for  "what  really  is  now."  If  he  finds  his  self, 
he  finds  reality.  If  he  finds  reality,  he  has  found 
the  universe.  "  It  is  only  he,"  said  Confucius, 


122  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

"  in  the  world,  who  possesses  absolute  truth  who 
can  get  to  the  bottom  of  the  law  of  his  being.  He 
who  is  able  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  the  law  of 
his  being  will1  be  able  to  get  to  the  bottom  of 
the  law  of  being  of  other  men.  He  who  is  able 
to  get  to  the  bottom  of  the  law  of  being  of  men 
will  be  able  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  the  laws 
of  physical  nature.  He  who  is  able  to  get  to  the 
bottom  of  the  laws  of  physical  nature  will  be 
able  to  influence  the  forces  of  creation  of  the 
Universe.  He  who  can  influence  the  forces  of 
creation  of  the  Universe  is  one  with  the  Powers 
of  the  Universe."  Thoreau  never  gets  to  the 
bottom  of  the  law  of  his  being  because  he  fails 
to  keep  the  other  men  in  mind,  because  he 
loses  his  bearings,  because  he  does  not  recog 
nize  his  individual  being  as  in  any  way  distin 
guishable  from  universal  being.  He  probes  for 
the  bottom  of  his  being  in  Walden  Pond,  before 
he  has  taken  the  trouble  to  be  anything  among 
other  beings  away  from  Walden  Pond.  He  hopes 
to  find  what  his  self  is  like  absolutely  apart 
from  relationships.  He  hypostatizes  "  self,"  sees 
nothing  else,  loses  its  bearings,  and  so  loses  it. 
Like  the  secret  of  harmony,  it  "  always  retreats 
as  I  advance  " ;  and  all  he  can  do  is  to  follow 
helplessly  —  a  nothing  in  search  of  a  some 
thing  ;  a  nothing  perpetually  dividing  itself  into 
a  something  and  getting  infinity.  The  problem 


POSITION  123 

of  self,  like  the  problem  of  love,  is  his  sore  afflic 
tion.  "  There  is  no  remedy  for  love  but  to  love 
more,"  said  he.  So  with  being;  there  is  no 
remedy  for  being  but  to  be  infinitely  more  —  of 
nothing. 

But  it  is  as  much  of  a  mistake,  on  the  whole, 
for  Thoreau's  critic  to  take  him  literally,  as  it 
was  for  Thoreau  to  take  himself  so  seriously; 
few  other  persons  besides  the  critic  are  going  to 
do  it.  Thoreau's  example  in  society  need  not  be 
worried  about.  The  instinct  of  self-preservation 
in  humanity  and  the  common  capacity  for  humor 
bring  it  about,  of  course,  that  "  Walden  "  is  in 
general  not  taken  literally.  It  is  easy  enough  to 
point  out  that  Thoreau's  main  effort  came  to 
nothing ;  but  the  likelihood  remains  that  Thoreau 
will  always  count  for  something  among  sophisti 
cated  persons  who  take  him  with  the  sufficient 
allowance  of  salt.  That  something,  though  it  be 
only  a  by-product,  and  though  it  represent  only  a 
fraction  of  the  man  —  "I  speak  out  of  the  best 
part  of  myself,"  said  Thoreau  in  another  connec 
tion  —  is  permanent,  and  of  the  first  importance. 

The  best  there  is  in  Thoreau  is  not  the  natu 
ralist  part  of  him.  Emerson  predicted  that  the 
example  of  his  usefulness  would  lead  to  the  crea 
tion  of  a  "  profession  "  of  naturalist :  "  I  think 
we  must  have  one  day  a  naturalist  in  each  village 
as  invariably  as  a  lawyer  or  doctor  ...  all 


124  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

questions  answered  for  stipulated  fees."  But 
Thoreau  the  philosopher  of  human  relationships, 
talking  of  friendship  and  charity  and  solitude, 
will  be  remembered  when  Thoreau  the  visitor  of 
wild  flowers  will  beg  for  notice. 

Philosophically  considered,  the  best  of  Tho 
reau  is  not  his  extreme  transcendental  gospel, 
the  darkest  corner  of  his  little  private  darkness ; 
is  not  his  urging  of  the  elementary ;  is  not  his 
association  with  a  very  provincial  school  which 
did  not  know  enough  in  general.  If  read  as  scrip 
ture,  as  some  of  his  friends  read  him,  or  as  mad 
man,  as  Lowell  read  him,  he  will  yield  nothing. 
He  cannot  be  taken  literally  any  more  than  a 
wild  odor  can  be  seized  and  kept.  "  I  am  per 
mitted  to  be  rash,"  he  said  in  the  "  Week."  It 
is  his  temper  which  is  needed  and  felt,  and  not 
his  vagaries  that  need  be  worshiped  or  excused. 
He  is  a  good  hater  and  refuser,  and  the  world 
likes  that  now  and  then.  Men  like  to  be  pricked ; 
men  demand  to  be  made  mad  on  occasions.  Men 
like  Thoreau's  temper  in  the  atmosphere  as  much 
as  they  like  the  flavor  of  his  wild  apples  in  their 
memories.  "  These  apples,"  he  says,  "  have  hung 
in  the  wind  and  frost  and  rain  until  they  have 
absorbed  the  qualities  of  the  weather  or  season, 
and  thus  are  highly  seasoned,  and  they  pierce  and 
sting  and  permeate  us  with  their  spirit " ;  if  his 
philosophical  offering  misses  richness,  it  is  highly 


POSITION 


125 


enough  spiced.  His  sting  is  far  from  venom 
ous  ;  "  I  would  give  up  most  other  things  to  be 
so  good  a  man  as  Thoreau,"  wrote  Stevenson  to 
one  of  the  biographers.  No  philosophical  attack 
on  Thoreau' s  individualism  can  take  the  tonic 
out  of  his  pages  or  the  temper  out  of  his  inde 
pendence.  It  can  be  shown  that  he  was  unreason 
able,  and  hypostatized  "  self  "  ;  but  in  "  Walden" 
(if  not  in  the  Journal)  he  still  stands  alone, 
halfway  enviable  in  his  loneliness.  Whittier 
thought  "  Walden  "  "  very  wicked  and  heathen 
ish  » —  but  "  capital  reading."  The  "  Good  heart, 
weak  head  "  of  Emerson  furnishes  a  perpetual 
text  for  Thoreau.  The  steadfast  air  of  the  pages 
on  philanthrophy  in  "  Walden "  should  alone 
preserve  Thoreau' s  name.  An  extreme  exam 
ple  of  self-satisfaction  can  do  no  harm  in  the 
twentieth  or  any  century.  If  Thoreau  seems  "  all 
improved  and  sharpened  to  a  point,"  his  example 
nevertheless  remains  delicious.  As  long  as  indi 
vidual  excellence  is  prized  by  however  slight  a 
minority,  his  books  will  be  instructive,  says  Low 
ell,  "  as  showing  how  considerable  a  crop  may  be 
raised  on  a  comparatively  narrow  range  of  mind, 
and  how  much  a  man  may  make  of  his  life  if  he  will 
assiduously  follow  it,  though  perhaps  never  really 
finding  it  at  last." 

Thoreau  will   be  found   a  very  satisfactory 
spokesman  for  one  who  feels  driven  into  a  posi- 


126  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

tion  somewhat  analogous  to  his  position  in  1840. 
Not  only  is  he  a  wholesome  shocking  force  in  the 
lives  of  young  people  who  have  been  brought  up 
too  exclusively  on  positivistic  or  humanitarian 
principles;  he  stands  pretty  staunchly  back  of 
one  when  one  desires  to  strike  at  the  confident 
and  benevolent  leveler,  with  his  wash  of  sociality 
and  sentiment,  and  when  one  desires  to  cry,  "  I 
do  not  believe  you !  Man  is  great ! "  "Do  not 
seek  so  anxiously  to  be  developed,"  warns  Tho- 
reau,  "  to  subject  yourself  to  so  many  influences, 
to  be  played  upon.  It  is  all  dissipation."  The 
greatest  apostle  of  Leisure  in  his  century,  he 
put  to  flight  Folly's  sociological  brood,  and 
only  asked  for  leisure  to  be  good.  That  his 
reaction  was  unreasonable,  and  that  his  refuge 
was  in  an  instinct  ("immemorial  custom"  and 
"transcendent  law")  as  objectionable  as  the 
socialistic  instinct,  does  not  cripple  his  support 
when  it  is  necessary  that  one  be  unreason 
able.  One  can  be  as  combative  and  as  asser 
tive  now  and  then  as  Thoreau  was  always ;  one 
still  "finds  it  difficult  to  make  a  sufficiently 
moderate  statement " ;  one  still  wants  to  bristle 
with  indignant  hyperbole  and  paradox  in  the 
humanitarian,  scientific,  reformatory,  or  prag 
matic  presence.  If  Thoreau  loses  in  the  broadest 
sense  by  being  terribly  single-minded,  he  is  valu 
able  in  a  narrower  sense  by  virtue  of  his  very 


POSITION  127 

singleness — valuable  as  a  protestant,  valuable 
as  an  antidotal  flavor. 

Thoreau,  finally,  is  an  American  classic.  He 
will  always  appeal  to  the  "  confirmed  city-men  " 
he  affected  to  pity.  For  the  same  reason  that 
"  Robinson  Crusoe  "  appeals  most  to  land  folk, 
"  Walden "  will  appeal  more  and  more  to  the 
men  and  women  of  "  institutions,"  to  men  in 
studies  and  clubs,  to  boys  by  the  fireside  in  win 
ter.  Thoreau  is  eminently  a  citizen  in  the  repub 
lic  of  letters,  and  continues  some  excellent  tradi 
tions.  "Even  his  love  of  Nature  seems  of  the 
intellectual  order,"  Whitman  thought,  "  —  the 
bookish,  library,  fireside  —  rather  than  smack 
ing  of  out  of  doors.  ...  I  often  find  myself 
catching  a  literary  scent  off  his  phrases."  The 
readers  of  "  Walden "  will  not  distrust  it  be 
cause  it  is  literary  ;  they  will  treasure  it  —  one 
cannot  say  how  long  —  because  it  is  literary, 
because  it  is  a  classic,  because  it  furnishes  defi-  / 
nite  delight.  A  substantial  critic  thought "  Wal 
den"  in  1879  "the  only  book  yet  written  in 
America  that  bears  an  annual  perusal,"  and  re 
marked  that  for  his  own  part,  with  "  Walden  " 
in  his  hands,  he  could  wish  "  that  every  other 
author  in  America  might  try  the  experiment  of 
two  years  in  a  shanty."  As  almost  every  one 
has  been  ambitious  to  be  a  second  Crusoe,  so 
a  few  spirits  (perhaps  more  than  confess  it) 


128  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

will  always  be  furtively  suspectiDg  that  by  two 
years  in  the  woods  they  could  do  themselves 
some  service.  "Crusoe"  and  "  Walden,"  classics 
of  solitude,  people  do  not  want  to  do  without. 

"  No  truer  American  existed  than  Thoreau," 
said  Emerson.  At  least  no  more  plain-spoken 
representative  of  transcendental  New  England 
could  be  asked  for,  it  seems  safe  to  say.  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that  the  spirit  of  "  Walden  " 
has  pervaded  the  American  consciousness,  stif 
fened  the  American  lip,  steadied  the  American 
nerve,  in  a  ponderable  degree.  By  creating  a 
classic  image  of  the  cynic  hermit  in  ideal  solitude 
Thoreau  has  demonstrated  some  of  the  mean 
nesses  of  the  demands  of  Time  and  Matter,  and 
furnished  the  spirit  and  will  for  social  criticism ; 
he  has  made  men  acute  critics,  if  not  sensible 
shepherds,  of  their  own  sentiments. 


THE    END 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   NOTE 

BIBLIOGRAPHIES  : 

FRANCIS  H.  ALLEN.  Bibliography  of  Thoreau. 
Boston,  1908.  Excellent,  and  practically  com 
plete  to  1908. 

JOHN  P.  ANDERSON.  Bibliography  of  Thoreau  ap 
pended   to   the  Life  by  Henry   S.   Salt  in  the 
Great  Writers   Series.    Briefer,  but  useful   to 
1896. 
WORKS  : 

References  are  to  the  Walden  Edition  (with  all 
the  "Journal").  20  vols.  Boston,  1906.  Almost 
complete.  The  other  authorized  editions  are  the 
Riverside  Edition,  11  vols.,  Boston,  1894,  and  the 
Riverside  Pocket  Edition,  11  vols.,  Boston,  1915. 
These  are  without  the  complete  "  Journal." 

The  Service.  Ed.  F.  B.  Sanborn.  Boston,  1902. 
The  essay  does  not  appear  in  full  under  this  title 
in  the  Walden  Edition,  although  most  of  the 
missing  parts  are  to  be  found  in  the  volumes  of 
the  "  Journal "  in  the  same  edition. 

The  Bibliophile  Society  of   Boston  has  privately 
printed  certain  fragments  of  the  Journal  and 
other  interesting  pieces  not  elsewhere  to  be  found. 
BIOGRAPHIES  : 

W.  E.  CHANNING.  Thoreau :  The  Poet-Naturalist. 
Boston,  1873,  1902. 

H.  A.  PAGE  (A.  H.  JAPP).  Thoreau,  His  Life 
and  Aims.  Boston,  1877.  London,  1878. 


132  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

F.  B.  SANBORN.  Henry  D.  Thoreau.  American 
Men  of  Letters  Series.  Boston,  1882. 

HENRY  S.  SALT.  Life  of  Henry  David  Thoreau. 
London,  1890.  Great  Writers  Series,  1896. 

MRS.  ANNIE  RUSSELL  MARBLE.    Thoreau:  His 

Home,  Friends,  and  Books.  New  York,  1902. 
CHIEF  CRITICAL  ESSAYS  : 

EMERSON,  "  Biographical  Sketch."  Prefixed  to 
vol.  I  of  the  Walden  Edition  of  Thoreau. 

LOWELL,  "  Thoreau."  My  Study  Windows. 

STEVENSON,  "  Henry  David  Thoreau :  His  Char 
acter  and  Opinions."  Familiar  Studies  of  Men 
and  Books. 

PAUL  ELMER  MORE.  Shelburne  Essays.  New 
York.  "  A  Hermit's  Notes  on  Thoreau,"  vol.  I 
(1904).  "Thoreau's  Journal,"  vol.  V  (1908). 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Adams,  John  Quincy,  75. 

^schylus,  81,  98. 

^sop,  76. 

Alcott,  A.  B.,  7,  10,  28, 43,  97, 102. 

America,  3,  55-57, 128. 

Anacreon,  81. 

Aristotle,  2. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  3, 100,  118. 

"Art  of  Life,  The,"  91. 

Bacon,  Francis,  28, 115. 

Bible,  English,  94. 

Boone,  Daniel,  32. 

Brisbane,  Albert,  57. 

Brook  Farm,  41. 

Brown,  John,  41,  48. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  66,  81. 

Browning,  Robert,  2. 

Bryant,  W.  C.,  3. 

Burroughs,  John,  29-30, 36, 37, 85. 

Byron,  15  n.,  119. 

"  Cape  Cod,"  73,  75,  77. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  2,  61,  67,  80,  94, 

119. 

Cato,  9,  64. 

Chalmers's  "Poets,"  90. 
Channing,  Ellery,  12. 
Channing,  W.  E.,  69,  79,  81. 
Chanticleer,  14. 
"  Character  "  (Emerson's),  57. 
Chateaubriand,  42. 
Chaucer,  100-01. 
Cholmondeley,  Thomas,  21,  52, 

95,99. 

Christian  Science,  62. 
"Circles"  (Emerson's),  70,  72. 
Colebrooke,  H.  T.,  54. 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  15  n.,  28,  50,  58, 

68,  94,  119. 
Columella,  64. 
Confucius,  56,  70,  120. 
Cooper,  J.  F.,  3. 


Cotton,  Charles,  2. 
Cowley,  Abraham,  2,  102. 
Crashaw,  Richard,  102. 

Daniel,  Samuel,  101. 

Daudet,  77. 

De  Tocqueville,  55. 

"Dial,"  17,  22,  35,  51,  52,  57,  91, 

94,  97,  98,  99. 

Dickens,  Charles,  12,  73,  77. 
Donne,  John,  101,  102. 
Drayton,  Michael,  101. 
Drummond,  William,  2. 
Dunbar,  Charles,  74  J?.,  77. 

Ecclesiastes,  44. 

"  Edinburgh  Review,"  55. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  55. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  1 ;  on  solitude, 
3;  on  Thoreau's  habits,  3;  ac 
count  of  Thoreau,  5 ;  edition 
of  Thoreau's  Letters,  5:  on 
Thoreau's  sensibility,  8;  source 
of  Thoreau's  ideas,  10 ;  on 
Thoreau's  sarcasm,  11 ;  on 
Thoreau's  reserves,  15;  con 
versation  with  Thoreau,  19-20; 
Cholmondeley,  21;  on  Tho 
reau's  verses,  22 ;  on  Thoreau's 
"Nature,"  27;  on  Thoreau's 
want  of  temptations,  35 ;  on 
Thoreau's  activity,  42 ;  expan 
sion,  42 ;  energizer  of  Thoreau, 
45 ;  on  the  Germans,  50 ;  as 
Platonist,  55;  on  Thoreau  as 
an  American,  55 ;  influence  on 
Thoreau,  67  ff,\  intellectual 
egoism,  34,55^.;  his  genius, 
67;  first  meeting  with  Tho 
reau,  67 ;  particularized  by 
Thoreau,  70-72;  on  Thoreau's 
literary  ambitions,  79;  read 
ing.  87;  on  Thoreau's  reading, 


136 


INDEX 


91;  on  the  Orientals,  95;  on 
the  classics,  98,  99;  on  Tho- 
reau's  "  Smoke,"  99 ;  and 
George  Herbert,  102,  103-04; 
on  Thoreau's  achievement, 
109 ;  a  challenge  for  Thoreau, 
111 ;  interpretation  of  "  spir 
it,"  113,  114;  his  quality,  119; 
on  Thoreau's  importance  as  a 
naturalist,  123-24. 

Emerson,  Mrs.,  23. 

"English  Traits"  (Emerson's), 
50,  85  n. 

EXPANSION,  39. 

Field,  John,  73. 
Flaubert,  81,  84. 
Fourier,  57. 
Fourierisrn,  44. 
Friendship,  17-27. 
"Friendship,"  107-08. 
FRIENDSHIP  ;  NATURE,  14. 
Fuller,  Margaret,  63,  97. 

German  romanticism,  12,  49  ff. 
Gilman,  Nicholas,  55. 
Goethe,  72,  120. 
Greece,  80,  85,  99. 
Greek  Anthology,  99. 
Greek  literature,  influence  on 
Thoreau  of,  97-100. 

Hawker,  Rev.  Stephen,  16  n. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  3, 7, 10, 32. 

Hazlitt,  William,  2. 

Hegel,  51. 

Herbert,  George,  58,  60,  63, 70,81, 

102, 103-08,  114. 
Hoar,  Madam,  32. 
Homer,  4,  70,  78,  81,  98. 
Hopkins,  Samuel,  55. 
Hosmer,  E.,  75. 
Howells,  W.  D.,  41. 
Hume,  David,  61. 

James,  Henry,  29. 
Jefferies,  Richard,  37. 
Jones,  Sir  William.  54. 
Journal,  Thoreau's :  Value  of,  1 ; 
self- revelation,  4;  sarcasm,  11 ; 


puns,  12 ;  extravagances,  1,  2, 
12, 109;  basis  of  the  "Week," 
14;  his  experience,  16;  record 
of  his  friendships,  2S,ff.\  ex 
tracts  on  friendship,  25-27; 
on  Nature,  11  ff. ;  Thoreau's  re 
gard  for,  66;  selected  for 
"  Walden  "  and  the  "  Week," 
70;  method  of  composition, 
79;  influence  on  Thoreau '3 
literary  career,  84;  character 
of  the  prose  in,  85;  the  index 
of  Thoreau's  failure,  109-10; 
on  the  telegraph-wire,  112-13. 

Kant,  Immanuel,  21. 
Keats,  John,  119. 

Landor,  W.  S.,  2. 

"  Life  Without  Principle,"  69. 

Livy,  64. 

Lowell,  J.R., 1,3,29,33,87, 124, 125. 

••  Maine  Woods,"  44,  77,  83. 
Marcus  Aurelius,  64,  65. 
"  Marius  the  Epicurean "  (Pa 
ter's),  86. 

Marshman,  Joshua,  54. 
Melville,  Herman,  3,  29,  32. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  16  n. 
Milton,  John,  58,  102,  103. 
"Mist,  "99. 
More,  Henry,  58. 
More,  P.  E.,  34  n.,  50  n.,  58  n. 

Nature,  27-38,  47,  198. 

New  England,  12, 55^.,  96, 98, 128. 

Newman,  Cardinal,  44,  62. 

Nietzsche,  44. 

Novalis,  16,  51,  54, 80. 

Oriental    literature,    influence 
on  Thoreau  of,  95-97. 

Parable,  Thoreau's,   12,  16,   17, 

18,51. 

Parker,  Theodore,  97. 
Pascal,  Blaise,  40,  114. 
Pater,  Walter,  82,  84,  85. 
Perm,  William,  55. 


INDEX 


137 


Persius,  70,  88.  . 

Pindar,  81. 

Plato,  28,  58,  97,  115,  116. 

Plotinus,  58. 

Poems,  Thoreau's,  22. 

Pope,  Alexander,  2. 

POSITION,  109. 

Puritanism,  55-56,  59. 

Quarles,  Francis,  81, 102,  103. 

READING,  87. 

Reading,  list  of  Thoreau's,  88- 

90  n. 

Ricketson,  Daniel,  8,  50. 
"  Robinson  Crusoe,"  127,  128. 
Romanticism,  German,  ^1  ff. 
Rousseau,  33, 112. 
Ruskin,  John,  42,  61,  119. 

Sadi,  16  n. 

Scherb,  Mr.,  51. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  119. 

"  Service,  The,"  45,  46,  48,  49,  57, 

60,  65,  70,  78,  84,  99,  111. 
Sewall,  Ellen,  22-24. 
Shakespeare,  102,  115, 116. 
Shelley,  P.  B.,  2,  119. 
"  Sic  Vita,"  104-06. 
Simonides,  99. 
Smith,  Sydney,  56. 
"  Smoke,"  99,  100. 
SOLITARY,  THE,  1. 
Solitude,  2. 

"  Solitude  "  (Zimmermann's),  14. 
•'  Sounds,"  8. 
SPECIFIC,  THE,  67. 
Spinoza,  52. 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  1.  5,  9,  11,  12, 

18,  42,  43,  64,  66,  68,  69,  73,  76, 

82,  84,  117,  126. 

Taylor,  Thomas,  58. 

Telegraph-wire,  112-13. 

Tennyson,  16  n. 

Thoreau,  Henry  David  :  Theory 
of  solitude,  2  ff. ;  public  and 
private,  4;  as  naturalist,  5; 
personal  appearance,  5, 6 ;  por 
traits,  6;  stoicism,  5, 8, 9;  race, 


7;  parents,  7,  8;  traits,  8-13; 
parable,  12,  13;  optimism,  14- 
16 ;  disappointments, 16;  quest, 
16,  17;  friendship,  17-27;  his 
ideal,  17;  solitude,  19;  Emer 
son's  criticism,  19-20;  love,  22- 
24;  Nature,  27-38;  Emerson's 
view  of  Nature  compared,  28 ; 
friendship  for  Nature,  27^'.; 
intellectual  egoism,  34  ff. ; 
ideal  of  independence,  35 ;  suc 
cessors  as  poet-naturalists,  35- 
38;  opinion  of  Nature-lovers, 
36;  need  of  expansion,  40  ff.\ 
sympathy,  41 ;  self-satisfac 
tion,  42;  view  of  society,  43  ff.; 
career  in  expansion,  45  ff.\ 
"  The  Service,"  45-46;  sources 
of  his  philosophy,  49  jf. ;  ques 
tion  of  German  influences,  49- 
55;  New  England  renaissance, 
55  ff. ;  influence  of  Emerson, 
57  ff. ;  intellectual  egoism, 
63^'.;  stoicism,  63-64;  com 
pared  with  Cato,  64;  epicure 
anism,  64-66;  genius  for  the 
specific,  67  ff.;  self-possession, 
67-68;  observation  of  human 
nature,  72  ff. ;  on  "  Uncle 
Charles  Dunbar,"  74  ff. ;  cre 
ative  genius,  76;  genius  for 
organization,  76^'.;  dramatic 
gift,  77;  theory  and  practice 
of  writing,  79-86;  work  on  the 
Indians,  79  n. ;  preoccupation 
with  the  facts  of  conscious 
ness,  82;  the  "  prose  school  of 
the  particular,"  81-86;  roman 
tic  composition,  85 ;  charm  as 
a  reader,  87^. ;  literary  epicu 
reanism,  87;  philosophical  po 
sition,  illustrated  from  the 
"  Dial,"  91-93  ;  influence  of  the 
Orientals,  100-03 ;  influence  of 
George  Herbert,  103-08  ;  per 
manent  and  temporary  qual 
ities,  109-10;  his  vacuum,  110- 
17;  his  hypostatizing  of  Re 
ality,  118-23;  his  permanent 
value,  123-27. 


138 


INDEX 


Thoreau,  John,  8. 

Thoreau,  Sophia,  32. 

Transcendentalism,  German,  49- 
50. 

Transcendentalism,  New  Eng 
land,  50. 

Transeendentalists,  3,  4,  6,  9,  11, 
12,  20,  34,  59,  100,  102. 

Vane,  Sir  Henry,  55. 
Varro,  64. 

Vaughan,  Henry,  102. 
Virgil,  60. 
Voltaire,  11. 

Walden,  Thoreau's  residence  at, 
4,  12,  30,  31,  47,  60,  72,  78,  112, 
120. 


11  Walden,"  4, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16n., 
18,  41,  43,  ,49,  55,  68,  70,  73,  75, 
76  n.,  77,78,  81,  88,  98,  109,  112, 
123,  125,  127,  128. 

"  Walking,"  49,  60. 

Walton,  Izaac,  2. 

Webster,  Daniel,  75. 

"  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Mer- 
rirnack  Rivers,"  4, 14,  49, 70,  75. 
77,  83,  95,  98,  100,  109,  124. 

Whitman,  Walt,  37,  84 n.,  127. 

Whittier,  J.  G.,  125. 

Wilkins,  Sir  Charles,  54. 

Woolman,  John,  55. 

Wordsworth,  William,  2,  23,  29, 
34,  42,  59,  119. 

Zimmermann,  J.  G.,  50. 


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